George Bernad Shaw wrote a play Pygmalion which is  a "witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction."

Shaw's Pygmalion tells the story of a snobbish linguist who bets that he can turn a Cockney* flower girl into the toast of London society merely by teaching her how to speak with a high class accent.

*A Cockney, in the loosest sense of the word, is an inhabitant of the East End of London.

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