Chapter 7: Language, Discourse, Literacy: Stability, Territory, and Transformation

Oddly, Professor Higgins’ boast maps neatly onto Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) schema for the forms of capital. Given an adequate supply of economic capital, Eliza might exchange it for embodied cultural capital in the form of a phonetic education. In turn, this would give her access to the elite networks of association that are represented at the ambassador’s garden party—social capital—or, alternatively, might be re-exchanged for economic capital in the form of a lady’s maid’s or shop assistant’s wage. Eliza’s problem, of course, is that she has no access to the requisite economic capital. The nature of her current cultural capital—kerbstone English—seems destined to fix her permanently at the bottom of the social ladder; until, that is, Higgins’ colleague, Colonel Pickering, in response to Eliza’s own initiative, steps in with an offer to subsidize her schooling.