Quote 19
HIGGINS. [After listening to Doolittle] Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall have no convictions left. (2.284)
Higgins, himself an expert in language, acknowledges the (sometimes dangerous) power of language and rhetoric.
Quote 20
HIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court.
PICKERING. Yes: let's. Her remarks will be delicious.
HIGGINS. She'll mimic all the people for us when we get home. (3.262-264)
Often, Higgins and Pickering do not seem to treat her like a human being. Her remarkable abilities are simply a source of entertainment for them.
Quote 21
THE NOTE TAKER. You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. That's the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines. (1.129)
Higgins suggests that being a maid or a shop assistant requires better English than being an aristocrat. Is he joking? Perhaps a little.