Definition of Habitus and Cultural Capital

According to Bourdieu (1984), each class has its own cultural background, knowledge,
dispositions, and tastes that are transmitted through the family. This is called the habitus to signal
its deep routinization, innateness, and embedding within a persons body, language, and tastes,
Habitus is a persons character and way of thinking (belief system, worldview and
consciousness) that tells him what he is and what he can be. It is an acquired disposition that he
has learned from his social world, like the family community, school, culture and media. It also
refers to the mental or cognitive structures through which people deal with the realities,
problems, and issues in their social world. This is eloquently articulated on how a student
performs his role as student in school, how he resolves his problems, and how he defines in
teaching and learning. Perhaps a clearer example of habitus is the etiquette in public places
(restaurant, cinema, church, school, etc). Students learn that dancing or laughing during
graduation ceremony is inappropriate through studying social behavior. This is something they
can easily do because they are able to realize acceptable or unacceptable behaviors in that
instance.
Cultural capital, on the other hand, is the social assets that are valued socially or
culturally by society as a whole or by those in power. This may constitute knowledge, systems,
aptitude, tastes (music, art, food, dress, recreational activities, etc.), manners, linguistic,
interpersonal skills, attitudes, and dispositions. The study of habitus cannot be separated from
cultural capital as the latter is a reflection of the former. One can certainly know a persons
habitus and cultural capital differ from individual to individual based on their family
background, educational attainment, ethnic group, social class, and so on. For example, high and
middle classes use their time effectively by devoting themselves to reading magazines, books,
and the like, which are not generally a shared taste by the topics for conversation, and
competencies in language and culture, because these differentiate their cultural capital. For this
reason, a highly valued cultural capital in a given society is more likely to provide comparative
advantage to individuals who possess it, and thus, becomes vehicle for power to impose its
definition of quality.
Familys Cultural Capital and Educational Achievement
Students gathered in school come from various families that differ in terms of language,
ethnic identity, economic class, geographic location, and the like. They show these differences in
school and serve as the basis of their interaction with fellow students and teachers. They also use
these as guides involving their academic concerns.
In Bourdiues research, he found out that family influences (particularly culture) are the
strongest predictor of students grades and positive achievement than all other variables. To him,
success in education depends fundamentally on ones exposure to the cultural capital of the
dominant or favored culture. The greater degree of cultural capital individuals possess, the more
successful the will be in the education system. Simply put, the more absorbed the individuals are
to the dominant culture, the greater is their chance to educational success. He concluded that
schools are biased against the culture of the poor and favor the culture of the rich and the middle
class. Schools use social constructs, language, books, instructional materials, and other

educational activities that are more familiar to the latter. For example, the information used in
textbooks in schools reflects the interest, values and tastes of the rich and middle class groups,
helping those students to be placed in higher education sections, with a more demanding
curriculum. The middle and trainings in cognitive skills, as compared to their counterpart, these
help them to easily adapt to school demands and allow higher educational achievement than the
poor ones. Therefore, culture, which is acquired in the family, reinforces social class, and schools
play a pivotal role in strengthening this inequity as they distribute cultural capital based on
students socio-economic grouping. As a result, education leads to the domination and advantage
of those in the upper class, leaving the poor at the marginalized position.
The Role of Schools According to Bourdieu
The central thesis of Bourdieu is that an individuals educational success is closely linked
to social class background and class bias, which are present in the school. For instance, schools
require cultural resources with which only the upper class students are endowed. Such condition
contributes to the transfer of power and privilege in favor of the students from upper class.
Bourdieu contend that the culture of the dominant group (rich and middle class) forms the
knowledge and skills that are most highly valued and taught in school. To possess this cultural
capital means one is considered educated. smart. or uneducated English language, for example,
which is the common language of the middle and upper class families is the preferred language
of schools, and teachers think highly of students, who have a good command of it. In other
words, schools appear to be neutral in evaluating students; but because the knowledge and
dispositions they value correspond to the habitus and cultural capital of the elite group, they are
likely to become biased. In this view, some students (usually the poor) are at the disadvantage in
the classroom, because their values and beliefs are not congruent with that of the school.
Therefore, what really happens in school is that educational procedures are advantages for the
upper and middle classes, and not for the poor.
Bourdieu added that students in schools compete for educational access and credentials.
He interestingly viewed the competition for educational access and credentials (especially those
obtained from prestigious schools) like diploma, transcript of records, honors, and awards to
represent institutionalized capital, which provides high position and good paying jobs in later
life. These educational proofs, according to him signify economic and social power, as they
enable students to obtain future membership to certain powerful social networks or connections
in the society, such as communities of professionals and associations of elite graduates. In short,
educational institutions not only become producers of economic and social capital but they also
extend the formation of such capitals outside the walls of school. This conveys that the type and
kind of school where students graduate from are influential factors in their future employment
and the attainment of power, prestige, and affluence in the society. In the other words of
Bourdieu, schools that are economically, socially, and politically structured, influence, to a great
extent, how students develop themselves in the society.
Code Theory of Basil Bernstein
Like Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein;s work on pedagogic discourse in concerned with the
production, distribution, and reproduction of official knowledge and how this knowledge is

related to structurally determined power relations Bernstein sees that society is divided into two
social classes a dominant upper / middle class and a subservient working class. With these
social classes, he asserts that two distinct cultures are formed in society: the high culture of the
upper / middle class and the low culture of the working class.
Bernsteins View on Language, Culture and Social Class
Bernstein linked language and culture with social class. He believed that analyzing the
relationship between language and social class would have far reaching implication to the
academic success of the students in school. Specifically, he averred that the poor, middle, and
upper classes have different sets of vocabulary, accent and expressions that reflect their cultural
capital and social class origins. Eventually, these pre-given language competencies become the
bases of their school performance.
Bernstein added that educational degrees and awards are forms of symbolic capital. As
symbol, they carry meaning or stand for an idea. As a consequence, they are trade for money,
good jobs, and social prestige. Symbolic capital is one of the most significant forms of capital as
it carries and determines the values of ones education. Possessors of symbolic capital are not
only able to justify their possession of other forms of capital but are able to change the structure
and possession of other forms of capital but are able to change the structure and rules for the
advantage. Accordingly, higher education can be seen as a valued commodity, which reproduces
the four different elements of capital (economic, cultural, symbolic and social) and maintains
status quo among the upper, middle, and lower classes. For example, a medicine degree carries
high prestige and can command high pay as compared to education course. This is the case
because the former requires higher financial investment and is usually afforded by the well-to-do
families only.
Bernsteins View on Society and Language Codes
As there are two cultures in society, there are also two language codes, namely: the
elaborated cord of the upper/middle class, which is formal and considered acceptable in the
classroom; and the restricted code of the working class, which is informal and considered
inappropriate and deviant in the classroom. The high culture is associated with the elaborated
code, which is the language code of the school. Speakers use Standard English vocabulary,
commit less grammatical lapses, and have weak local accents. Besides, this code is more
analytical and narrative, and characterized to have creative linguistic ability, richer employment
of both adjectives and adverbs, and a considerable use of symbolism of a higher order to
discriminate and distinguish between meanings within speech sequences. Obliviously, children
brought up in elaborated code will easily find the manipulation of abstract ideas and thoughts
inside the classroom, as their language code is the same with what the school utilizes.
On the other hand, the low culture is associated with the restricted code, which is
culturally deficient. It is a working class speech, which is more descriptive and narrative, and
characterized to be grammatically incorrect. It is considered to have more restricted vocabulary,
repeated use of short comments/questions, use of slang or regional words, use of uncomplicated
words, incapacity to verbalize abstractions, and with strong local accents. Also, this code is

characterized to have limited use of adjectives and adverbs, simple and repetitive conjunctions,
such as so, them and because. As this does not conform to the language code of the school, users
of it find it difficult to handle the demands and challenges of the school.
Bernsteins Communication Codes
For Bernstein, the social class differences in the language or communication or
communication codes of working class and middle class children reflect class and power
relations in school. He argued that the communication codes of the upper class are transmitted by
schools at the disadvantage of the poor. Therefore, children from upper class are already ahead,
because they come from exclusive schools, with advance language programs, congruent to the
expectation of the education system. Once in school, it seems that that system is tailored to
exclude the working class and guarantees the success of the upper class. What really happens in
school is that the poor are at a disadvantage because their language style is different from that of
the school, and they find learning difficult, as they cannot decode the language used by their
teachers. hey obtain low grades and fin less meaning to their school experiences, because they
can hardly understand the language used in school. Similarly, they could not write or speak
grammatically correct sentences, as this completely different from what they use at home and in
their community. As a consequence of this language barrier, they tend to have poor academic
performance and low educational aspirations, manifested by absenteeism, tardiness, bullying and
the like. In contrast, the upper class already possesses the code of the message and therefore, has
the access to knowledge necessary to succeed in school. This leads Bernstein to conclude on two
important points about education: (a) schools reproduce what they are ideologically committed to
eradicating; and (b) success in education depends fundamentally on the language children
acquired in their earliest years.