Gendered Information Networks and the Telephone Voice in Shaw's Pygmalion and Village Wooing

This article considers women's contributions to the work of linguistic purification through their enforcement of the "telephone voice," a strict method of articulation taught to switchboard operators. Situating George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and Village Wooing in their technological climate, it argues that these plays imagine the new experience women might have with language in a telephonic world while also searching out a mode of acoustic inscription modeled on the telephone voice that might narrow the gap between script and performance.