Kingsman, Not My Fair Lady: Dialect and Stereotype in the Films The Secret Service and The Golden Circle

2.1. The boys from Camden

When the previously mentioned conversation occurs, the audience already has a clear image of both characters and their opposite social contexts. On one end of the social spectrum, there’s Eggsy: the audience has “visited” his poor Camden neighbourhood, observed its small degraded houses and witnessed the aggressiveness in the family relationships; it has seen him at the pub, sitting with his cap on, with friends that comment on his mother’s looks in inappropriate terms, and being threatened by young men dressed in tracksuit jackets; it has watched him break several laws by stealing a car, driving it too fast and challenging the Police. Harry/Galahad has chastised him for giving up on his education and hobbies, despite excelling in both, and never having had a job: the audience was thus informed of both the young man’s abilities, his social failures and the employment difficulties of those in his situation.

Furthermore, the audience has heard Eggsy speak, has heard his friends and family speak. By minute 27, the audience has heard the Camden boys (and adults) do the following:

• suppress the /h/, as in “here” /hɪə(r)/, pronounced /’ɪə’/, and the final /g/, as in “going”

• /ˈɡəʊɪŋ/, pronounced /ˈɡəʊɪn/

• glottalize the /r/ in “sorry” /ˈsɒri/, pronounced /ˈsɒʔi/, and the /t/, for example, in “pretty”/ˈprɪti/, pronounced /ˈprɪʔi/

• convert the sounds /ð/ or /θ/ into /v/, /f/ or /d/, as in thought /ˈθɔːt/, pronounced /fɒt/; or Arthur /ˈɑːθər/, pronounced as /ˈɑːfə’/

• shorten diphthongs to monophthongs, such as in saved /seɪvd/, pronounced as /səvd/

They have also heard, and will hear throughout the film, contractions such as “ain’it” e “innit” (isn’t it?), the suppression or levelling of verbs, such as “Why we walkin’?” and “you was” or the double negative “I won’say no’in’“(I won’t say nothing), as well as expressions like “nik’is’ca’” (steal his car), and others that mark his speech as specifically dialectal Cockney. Planchenault describes dialect as a variation of a natural language that deviates from the standardized form, with this variation reflecting the language’s intrinsic diversity as it is used by people from various regional, social, and ethnic backgrounds (268). Both definitions centre in the idea of variation from standard, though the description of standard as “the most generally found”, true for American English, but maybe not applicable to British English.

In fact, Trudgill notes the dialectal nature also of Standard English, used, according to him, by no more than 15 per cent of the British population in 1999. He writes that “Standard English, whatever it is, is less than a language, since it is only a variety of English among many”, though, since it is used both in education and politics throughout the English-speaking world and often outside of it, it “may be the most important variety of English” (118). Santipolo states that “Standard (British) English and Cockney are the varieties of English placed on the opposite ends of the linguistic continuum in the London area” (403). This places Cockney, the working-class accent, at the negative opposite pole from Standard English, and particularly Received Pronunciation (RP), with a middle ground in present days in Estuary English—a London dialect described by Rosewarne in 1984 as “a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, “Estuary English” speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground” (1). Estuary English has been expanding in recent years to, as mentioned by Ulrike Altendorf, include “speakers who want to conform to (linguistic) middle class norms either by moving up or down the social scale”, since it “comprises features of RP as well as non-standard London English thus borrowing the positive prestige from both accents without committing itself to either.” (2)

This might correspond, in The Secret Service, to the accent employed by the state lawyer, in a short dialogue with Eggsy at the Police station, circa minute 16: his profession and his use of Standard grammar and syntax informs the audience that he is an educated man and, although his accent reveals his working-class origins, it is much less marked than Eggsy’s and his friends’.

2.2. Kingsman gentlemen

Galahad, as a lead character, stands for the very small percentage of RP speakers in Britain. RP, a particular accent within Standard English, arose and gained prevalence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a moment when the “stigmatization of English urban dialects … coincided with a period of bitter class conflict in Britain” (Milroy and Milroy 157). It became, Peter Trudgill adds, “sociolinguistically unusual when seen from a global perspective”, as, instead of an association with geographical area, it became correlated with the privilege and education of upper and upper-middle-classes (118), particularly the aristocracy and associated elites.

In contrast with Eggsy’s portrayal as part of the stigmatized Cockney-speaking working class, Kingsman agents come from upper crust families, are educated at Oxford or Cambridge, most own luxurious houses, all wear tailored suits, have code names associated with the legendary Round Table, and speak in the RP accent that, combined with their “gentlemanly” manners, confirms their social status. In fact, the Kingsman Agency, founded after WWI by aristocrats, has kept as an implied rule the selection of new members solely within the aristocracy—as proved by the following dialogue between Galahad and Arthur, leader of Kingsman, in a state-of-the-art technology conference room decorated in Victorian style:

This dialogue not only presents the Kingsman Agency as a generally prejudiced and closed off institution, but it also refers back to the idea of change introduced before by the reference to My Fair Lady, with a twist: it is no longer the individual that must transform, but the world that is advancing, and the ancient and weakened institution of aristocracy that must change with it. This demand for advancement (and the refusal by the Kingsman leader) introduces social change and mobility, towards inclusiveness and identity that will be reflected in this film in the preservation of Eggsy’s speech patterns and accent. Despite the earlier allusion to My Fair Lady as a model, the greatest part of Eggsy’s metamorphosis in Kingsman does not focus on the loss of the cockney accent, as with the character Eliza Doolittle: in fact, his accent is dismissed as irrelevant by Galahad. This may correspond to the present day weakening in the stigma imposed by the use of dialects, including class dialects, as indicated to a point by the social and geographic expansion of Estuary English noted above, but it may also be part of the films’ not entirely successful attempt to use social stereotypes to break said stereotypes.

2.3. Not My Fair Lady, but still the stigma

Eggsy’s uniqueness highlights both the success and the limitations of challenging the stigma around working-class accents. His contrast to the candidates for the Agency, all upper class, is immediately made clear in dress code and dialect. They elicit instant responses from the male candidates, hence defining a certain type of aggressive interpersonal relationship, based on prejudice: they mispronounce his name, calling him “Eggy”, list universities he might have attended, suggesting, as they hear him, more regionally distant universities, such as Durham (in the north of England) and Saint Andrews (in Scotland)—too prejudiced to admit the possibility of a socially defined accent—, and insinuate he might have served them at a McDonalds. The dialect becomes paramount in the cleavage between him and the group, based on pre-assumptions that associate Cockney to lack of education or even intelligence and capability. It does not generate humour, as defined by Delabastita, since it is meant to present the main character with obstacles to overcome and to denounce the derogatory attitude of most members of the upper classes towards their working-class counterparts, as well as to show Eggsy as unique in the context of Kingsman.

This prejudiced attitude by Eggsy’s male peers is maintained throughout the film (and extends to the second film), centred mostly in the character of Charlie, who provokes him through styleshifting, for example, “What’s wrong, mate, can’t take a joke?” and “Come on, you pleb.” (00:41:35), enunciated in an accent similar to Eggsy’s, a significant part of the provocation. Later on, circa 00:42:30, Charlie directly refers to Eggsy’s status as benefiting from the type of “positive discrimination” that allows poor C students from state schools into Oxford, because they have “disabled lesbian Mothers”. Since the audience is aware that Eggsy is both intelligent and capable, there is a dissociation between accent and ability that dilutes the stereotype, both of his class and of the transformative film hero. Preserving the accent to the end of the second film avoids detaching him entirely from his roots, so “manners maketh man”, not origin or speech.

The persistence of Eggsy’s accent may be considered, to a point, what Hodson defines as linguistic divergence, in a situation where style or code-shifting might be expected. Maynard and Turowetz refer to code-shifting as reflecting “speakers’ ability to categorize situations, interlocutors, and social relationships and thereby to make inferences and judgments about the appropriate and relevant speech forms to produce.” (257). Hodson also writes that “while the way in which someone speaks is to a large extent determined by their social and regional background, the particular context within which he or she speaks and the purpose of that speech will also influence the language variety used” (171). Eggsy style-shifts once to impersonate another agent, Charlie style-shifts as a form of aggression. Eggsy, however, does not conform to the predicted effect of a My Fair Lady type transformation, a permanent alteration to RP speech patterns or style-shifting in the presence of his Kingsman peers. It is relevant to notice that, as pointed above, as Eggsy dons his “bespoken suit” and impersonates the leader of Kingsman, Arthur/Chester King, circa 1:38:00 of the film, he briefly but assuredly style-shifts to RP; it is not, thus, that he cannot do it, but that he does not deem it necessary or does not desire to change his dialectal pattern, suggesting that accent is either irrelevant in his metamorphosis or an integral element of personality. He maintains it even as he becomes nobility by marriage, at the end of The Golden Circle. In both cases, it suits Galahad’s attitude of renewal within Kingsman and these films’ ambiguous use of stereotype.

In the first film, as Galahad and Eggsy walk to the tailor’s, to order his “bespoken suit”, they exchange the following lines:

The dialogue introduces the final note of difference with My Fair Lady, by denying the need for a shift in accent. However, Krarup notes the paradoxical nature of this dialogue, since, while it does present a “social critique of the rigidness of the social class boundaries in contemporary Britain” (47), by stating that what makes a gentleman are his actions and nature, thus placing the fault of class prejudice not in the disparaged class, but in the prejudiced, he also refers to the “bespoken suit” as the first step towards becoming a gentleman (stressed sentence)—a piece of clothing too expensive for most working-class members.

There is, therefore, an antithetical and perhaps unexpected effect of Eggsy’s metamorphosis, despite his accent: the reinforcement of the basic class stereotype. Moffat and Bond state that Eggsy does maintain a connection to his family (mother and sister) and his accent, but undergoes “the Pygmalion transformation the film references: casting aside working-class habits, behaviours, and modes of dress to become the socially ‘superior’ gentleman spy” (364). This is evident at the end of the first film, when Eggsy, now Galahad, wearing his suit and the standard Kingsman umbrella, faces his former neighbours in the same pub where the late Galahad had first enunciated the words “Manners Maketh Man”. We hear the cockney accent, as Eggsy emulates Harry’s words, but no longer see the same man. So, even though, according to these authors, “The film partly overcomes one of the problems of this elitist paradigm by casting Harry, the ultimate gentleman, as the Kingsman who works to cultivate working-class talent, first in his protégé (Eggsy’s father) and then in Eggsy” (Moffat and Bond 363), it also partially defeats it in this scene, by definitely distancing Eggsy, already transformed, from this poor and uneducated, violent and thickly cockney-accented group that, at the end of the film, still fits the stereotype of the British working class.

3.1. American villains

In The Secret Service, the villain Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is a tycoon who intends to use technology to change the world by driving entire populations worldwide to violence and massacre, while he selects a number of socially and politically relevant people to save and control, through a device implanted in the brain. He is a black man educated in MIT, fascinated by old spy films and the bigger-than-life villain in those films.

Moffat and Bond point Valentine as culturally problematic:

This portrayal may not correspond to the British attitude towards ethnicity, but may very well be a reflection of an American point of view that stigmatizes it, independently of education, as Milroy and Milroy point out as they write that “In Britain the strongest gut reactions are in response to social class or class-related stereotypes, while in the United States they are associated with race and ethnicity” (153). This extends to cinema, as, Monaco defends, “Racism pervades American film because it is a basic strain in American history” (268). Kingsman serves as an example of the conscious use of the stigma and stereotypes tied to this attitude.

The imaging is patent in Valentine’s appearance, as he wears the cap, sports attire and bling often associated with American black men, and speaks (mostly) in Standard American English, but with an AAVE accent. Circa 01:09:36 in the film, Valentine says about the British, “I have trouble understanding you sometimes. You all speak so funny”, which presents him as “other” in the context of RP English. As an AAVE speaker, however, he is also “other” to the American English standard accent prevalent in the USA. Through his accent, the character is in a way detached from his educated background, and traced back to a heritage of language prejudice. Pullum states:

These “ignorant mistakes” include syntax, vocabulary and phonetic traits and a correlation with slang, which, in Pullum’s perspective, “represents a vivid, colloquial word or phrase associated with some subculture not yet incorporated as part of the mainstream language” (40). Most of these words already exist in the mainstream language, but are assigned new meanings, as in the case of Valentine’s “a little hiccup” (for the concept of “problem”). Pullum debunks the misconception of these and others as errors or subversions, by pointing out the set of rules that dictate their use, and noting that they are, in fact, marks of a dialect, and that dialect “doesn’t mean a marginal, archaic, rustic or degraded mode of speech” (44).

AAVE is, nevertheless, “probably the most stigmatized language variety of all in the United States”, according to Milroy and Milroy, which appears to “spring from the bitter economic, political and social cleavages created by slavery and subsequently the Civil War” (159). Both in pre- and post-war society, black people constituted the lowest social strata, hardly a class, especially among the former slave owners in the South and this chronic situation of poverty and exclusion based on race remains today, despite the cultural and social changes that ended segregation in the twentieth century, and the more recent that dictated the spread of AAVE, used by many in the non-black population in the USA and, thanks to film and music, outside the US.

Valentine’s speech patterns present several marks of AAVE, though more in speech than grammar. Educated people, as Lippi-Green states, “are more exposed to the written language and literary tradition; they may, in simple terms, write better than the “less educated”” (55); education addresses structure, and therefore standardization happens mostly in syntax and lexicon. In the case of Valentine, the occasional AAVE structure slips through some slang, like the use of the world “ass” (in “dope-ass smoking jacket”, for example), the use of the word man, with a drawl, as interjection (“Hell, man” or “Oh, man”) or the frequent swearing (with the use of variants of the word fuck). It seems important to stress the casting of Samuel L. Jackson, an American star connoted with the role of the aggressive but funny black criminal, excessive and AAVE-accented, famous for his staple interjection “motha’fucka’!” As Monaco indicates, “As the actors became stars, their images began to affect audiences directly. Star cinema – Hollywood style – depends on creating a strong identification between hero and audience” (265). This may be applied to how the stardom and particular characteristics of an actor affect the audience’s apprehension of the role: in the case of Samuel L. Jackson, the audiences see and hear the star as much as they see and hear Valentine.

Identifying accent traits is hampered by the standard use of grammar and by a severe lisping, which confuses the pronunciation of sounds such as /s/ or /z/, but also the voiceless /θ/, as in “thing”, for example; it is the accent that nevertheless denounces the character’s AAVE origin. In the film, it is possible to identify, for example, the following instances:

• /r/ deleted, also in intervocalic position, /ˈsɒi/ for sorry /ˈsɒri/, among others (non-rhotic)

• intervocalic /l/ also deleted, for example in /ˈbɪ’jəns/ for billions /ˈbɪljəns/

• suppression of voiceless end or middle consonants, as in /ˈɪn’ɚˌnɛt/ for Internet /ˈɪntɚˌnɛt/ or /faɪn’ɪn/ for finding /faɪndɪŋ/

• consonant /d/ devoiced in final position, such as in [ˈtoʊɫ] for told [ˈtoʊɫd]

• replacement of dental fricatives, for example /dɪs/ for this /ðɪs/ or /dəʊz/ for those /ðəʊz/

• replacement of the final sound /n/ by the nasalization of the previous vowel in man [mæ̃].

• monophthongization of /aɪ/ as /a:/, for example in y /aɪ/ pronounced /ma:/

• a twang, similar to the Southern American English drawl, which changes the intonation of the sentences

This association with ethnicity alone may explain Valentine’s acceptance by the Americans as the villain. Kozloff notes that “Recognizable, clichéd dialects are used on screen to sketch in a character’s past and cultural heritage, to locate each person in terms of his or her financial standing, education level, geographical background, or ethnic group.” (82). In spite of his demonstration of power over both black and white people from America and the USA, the film reinforces the stereotype of the black American criminal, as well as the heroic nature of the white male gentleman spy.

Poppy (The Golden Circle) is a different case, but it still reinforces a stereotype. This malefactor is a white woman: the audience is informed, through a news clip, that she is a Harvard Business graduate, but also a formerly institutionalized mental health patient, “intelligent”, “ruthless” and with “superficial charm” (circa 1:16:30). Poppy (Julienne Moore) is also enthralled by mid-twentieth century American aesthetics and culture, which she reproduces both in personal style and in her hideout in Colombia, Poppy Land, a highly technological picturesque mid-fifties small town, from where she manages a drug trafficking network and launches a plan to ransom the world.

She is an educated woman, whose accent falls within what Milroy and Milroy define as the prevalent Network American English, the result of a process of levelling that “seems to give rise to the American perception of a standard spoken language as ‘neutral’ and ‘accentless’” (151), an idea underlying also LippiGreen’s description of an accent generically perceived as having “no regional accent”, being “geographically neutral” (mostly Midwest), “not sloppy in terms of pronunciation or grammar” and “easily understood by all” (58). Since a particular accent is unidentifiable in Poppy’s speech, and syntax and lexicon conform to the standard, she is, in fact, the staple for the Network American English, to the point where, circa 1:13:31, she transforms into the broadcaster/show host, by presenting her ransom demand as a commercial. This apparently places her outside the scope of stereotyping and stigmatization, so a broader view of the character is necessary to comprehend how the intertwine of extra-linguistic aspects and speech serve as vehicles for stereotyping.

First, there is the issue of gender role. Poppy superimposes her fixation with the 50s and 60s American culture to her education in business, and therefore her image of mid-century housewife to her role as the boss of the criminal organization, addressing and mixing both stereotypes. This may present a critique towards the place of the woman, especially as viewed in the old spy films. Conversely, Poppy is the example of the mad, obsessive woman, who maintains her educated tone and manners even in her most sadistic moments of violence, when she orders a man’s death by meat grinder. Her controlled speech, sweet tone and clear enunciation match the image of selfcontrol associated with TV broadcasters and businesswomen (competing in a world of men), but her constant smile and 50s/60s clothing also complete the picture of the passive, submissive Stepford-wife type—based on the concept created by Ira Levin in his 1972 romance The Stepford Wives, adapted to the cinema in 1975 and again in 2004, as a dark comedy. By contrast with her actions, the idea of madness is reinforced. As a result, despite her identification with mainstream through speech, audiences easily accept both her role as villain and her peculiar stereotyping.

3.2. Not heroes, just cowboys

Statesman agents, the American counterpart to Kingsman, are white male cowboys in denim trousers and Stetson hats from Kentucky, a region, according to Schneider, closely associated with the “hillbilly” image. Schneider describes naturals of this region as follows:

In The Golden Circle, the stereotype is conveyed by an immediate association with horses and liquor, through code names such as Tequilla, Champagne and Whiskey, revolvers, high-tech whips and lassos, and a heavy Kentucky dialect from the area of the Ohio river, as patent in IDEA, of which we may note, as examples:

• the southern drawl (monophthongs into diphthongs and elongation of monophthongs), as in /baʊːls/ for balls /bɔːls/ or Tequila, /tɪˈkiːlə/, pronounced /tɪˈkeɪːlə/; the drawl, though difficult to pin down, produces an easily identifiable intonation and rhythm of speech.

• the simultaneous pin/pen merger and suppression of voiceless end consonants, for example, keeping /ˈkiːpɪŋ/ to /ˈkeːpɪn/, thinking /ˈθɪŋkɪŋ/ to /ˈθeŋkɪn/ or doing /ˈduːɪŋ/ to /ˈduːen/

• pin/pen merger /e/ for /i/ before nasal, as in British /ˈbrɪtɪʃ/, pronounced /ˈbretɪʃ/ or /hem/ for him /hɪm/

• monophthongization of /aɪ/ as /a:/, for example in my /aɪ/ pronounced /ma:/

There are also a number of idioms and expressions that are identifiable with the South, such as “fancy spectacles” (old fashioned vocabulary), “that dog won’t hunt” (for I don’t believe you), “that wanna make you slap your mamma” (for something very good/intense), “shitin’ in high cotton” (for having lots of money), “booze”, “moonshine” (as an adjective); “y’all” is also used constantly by all agents, as well as “ain’t” and the double negative, for example in “ain’t keepin’ nothing” or “ain’t never”.

These American cowboys are stereotypically tough; however, they are not the heroes: the three remaining British ultimately face the Golden Circle criminals alone, while Tequila needs to be saved and Whiskey reverses role and becomes the last villain to be defeated. They represent, as Schneider writes, a culture that “is real and is being maintained, but it is also a rural and conservative one, and as such no longer typical of modern American society, even in the South.” Typical or not, it corresponds still to the stereotyped image of the American “hillbilly” South inside and outside of America. That it accepts a non-stereotypical female (a non-cowboy without a southern accent) among its ranks and sees one of their own converted into a gentleman in a “bespoken” suit may be viewed as an attempt—as ambiguous as the metamorphosis of Eggsy in The Secret Agent—toward social renewal.