1. Cultural Capital and Literacy

Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital is a way to understand how social hierarchies influence access to knowledge and competence. He distinguishes three main forms of capital:

1. Economic capital – money, property, material resources.

2. Social capital – networks, relationships, connections.

3. Cultural capital – knowledge, skills, habits, tastes, and dispositions that are valued in a given society.

Literacy is not just a skill: in Bourdieu’s framework, literacy is a socially mediated capacity. It’s shaped by:

• Exposure – What kind of texts, language registers, and discourse patterns a person encounters in childhood and adulthood.

• Class background – Families with more cultural resources often provide early access to books, formal instruction, and sophisticated language use.

• Habitus – The internalized dispositions and habits of thought that make certain ways of reading, understanding, and interpreting texts “natural” for some groups but alien for others.

• Linguistic norms – Society favors certain dialects, registers, and vocabularies in schools, workplaces, and official communications, which may exclude people whose home language or vernacular differs.

So, literacy is embedded in social context. Two people with the same “mechanical reading ability” (decoding words and sentences) may differ dramatically in their ability to navigate texts that carry authority, implicit assumptions, or specialized cultural references.

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2. Implications for Accessibility

From this perspective, the question isn’t:

“What reading age should we target to make this text accessible?”

Instead, it becomes:

“Who can actually understand and engage with this text, given their cultural background, social context, and prior experiences? Who is effectively excluded?”

For example:

• A legal document written at a “grade 12 reading level” may technically be decodable by many adults, but if it assumes familiarity with legal concepts, procedural norms, or formal register, a large segment of the population is effectively excluded.

• A health leaflet may use simple words, but references cultural practices, idioms, or bureaucratic structures unfamiliar to certain communities. Again, accessibility is constrained socially, not just cognitively.

This approach shifts the focus from individual deficiency to structural inequity. Literacy gaps are not simply failures of the reader; they are often mismatches between the linguistic and cultural capital required by institutions and the capital that individuals have accumulated.

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3. Epistemic Justice

Bourdieu’s lens aligns with ideas of epistemic justice, which examines who gets to produce, circulate, and have their knowledge recognized. Key points:

• Testimonial injustice – when someone’s knowledge is undervalued because of their social identity or lack of “recognized” cultural capital.

• Hermeneutical injustice – when people lack the social or conceptual tools to make sense of their experiences because dominant institutions control the interpretive frameworks.

Example: Official health guidance may use medical jargon that is inaccessible to people without certain educational or cultural backgrounds, not because they are incapable, but because the social systems privilege a particular form of literacy.

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4. Practical Takeaways

• Designing accessible materials: Rather than simplifying language mechanically, consider who your audience is, what cultural references they know, and what assumptions are embedded in the text.

• Measuring literacy: Metrics like “reading age” or even PIAAC proficiency tell only part of the story. Understanding the distribution of cultural capital gives a more nuanced view of who is effectively literate in real-world contexts.

• Policy and equity: Interventions can be targeted not just at improving individual skills, but at reducing structural barriers — e.g., simplifying institutional language, providing interpretive support, or validating diverse forms of knowledge.

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In short: Literacy is not just an individual cognitive skill. It’s a socially situated capacity that depends on what knowledge, norms, and dispositions a person has had access to. Addressing literacy inequalities requires looking beyond “reading level” to the social structures that define who is recognized as capable of understanding and participating.