a “true” definition of the speech community, or for the “true” boundaries around some speech community, is just a wild goose chase.’
It remains so even if we decide that a speech community is no more than some kind of social group whose speech characteristics are of interest and can be described in a coherent manner.
Sociolinguistics is the study of language use within or among groups of speakers.
The kind of group that sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the speech community. For purely theoretical purposes, some linguists have hypothesized the existence of an ‘ideal’ speech community. This is actually what Chomsky (1965, pp. 3– 4) proposes, his ‘completely homogeneous speech community’ (see p. 3). However, such a speech community cannot be our concern: it is a theoretical construct employed for a narrow purpose. Our speech communities, whatever they are, exist in a ‘real’ world. Consequently, we must try to find some alternative view of speech community, one helpful to investigations of language in society rather than necessitated by abstract linguistic theorizing. Lyons (1970, p. 326) offers a definition of what he calls a ‘real’ speech com-munity: ‘all the people who use a given language (or dialect). It is really quite easy to demonstrate that a speech community is not coterminous with a language: while the
English language is spoken in many places throughout the world, we must certainly recognize that it is also spoken in a wide variety of ways, in speech communities that are almost entirely isolated from one another, e.g., in South Africa, in New Zealand, and among expatriates in China. Alternatively, a recognizably single speech community can employ more than one language: Switzerland, Canada, Papua New Guinea, many African states, and New York City. Alternatively, a recognizably single speech community can employ more than one language: Switzerland, Canada, Papua New Guinea, many African states, and New York City. We must also acknowledge that using linguistic characteristics alone to determine what is or is not a speech community has proved so far to be quite impossible because people do not necessarily feel any such direct relationship between linguistic characteristics A, B, C, and so on, and speech community X.
What we can be sure of is that speakers do use linguistic characteristics to achieve group identity with, and group differentiation from, other speakers, but they use other characteristics as well: social, cultural, political and ethnic, to name a few. Referring to what they call speech markers, Giles, Scherer, and Taylor (1979, p. 351) through speech markers functionally important social categorizations are discriminated, and . . . these have important implications for social organization. For humans, speech markers have clear parallels . . . it is evident that social categories of age, sex, ethnicity, social class, and situation can be clearly marked on the basis of speech, and that such categorization is fundamental to social organization even though many of the categories are also easily discriminated on other bases. Our search must be for criteria other than, or at least in addition to, linguistic criteria if we are to gain a useful understanding of ‘speech community.’ We might require that only a single language be spoken, and that the speakers in the community share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behavior in the community, that is, observe certain linguistic norms. The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms; This definition shifts the emphasis away from an exclusive use of linguisticcriteria to a search for the various characteristics which make individuals feel that they are members of the same community. EXP: Thus, all New York speakers from the highest to lowest status are said to constitute a single speech community because, for example, they agree in viewing presence of post vocalic [r] as prestigious. They also agree on the social value of a large number of other linguistic elements. Southern British English speakers cannot be said to belong to the same speech community as New Yorkers, since they do not attach the same social meanings to, In this sense, ‘speech community’ is a very abstract concept, one likely to create not a few problems, because the particular norms that a community uses may or may not be exclusively linguistic in nature, and even the linguistic norms themselves may vary considerably among small sub-groups.
Gumperz (p. 101) to use the term linguistic community rather than speech community. He proceeds to define that term as follows: a social group which may be either monolingual or multilingual, held together by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weaknesses in the lines of communication. Linguistic communities may consist of small groups bound together by face-to-face contact or may cover large regions, depending on the level of abstraction we wish to achieve. Bloomfield (1933, p. 42) uses to open his chapter on speech communities: ‘a speech community is a group of people who interact by means of speech.’ The extension is provided by the insistence that a group or community is defined not only by what it is but by what it is not: the ‘cut-off’ criterion. Not only must members of the speech community share a set of grammatical rules, but there must also be regular relationships between language use and social structure; i.e., there must be norms which may vary by sub-group and social setting. ‘the speech varieties employed within a speech community form a system because they are related to a shared set of social norms’ (p. 116). Such norms, however, may overlap what we must regard as clear language boundaries.
For example, in Eastern Europe many speakers of Czech, Austrian German, andHungarian share rules about the proper forms of greetings, suitable topics for conversation, and how to pursue these, but no common language. They are united in a Sprachbund, ‘speech area,’ not quite a ‘speech community,’ HYMES Hymes (1974, p. 47) disagrees with both Chomsky’s and Bloomfield’s definitions of a speech community. He points out that it is impossible to equate language and speech community when we lack a clear understanding of the nature of language. He insists that speech communities cannot be defined solely through the use of linguistic criteria (p. 123). The way in which people view the language they speak is also important rules for using a language may be just as important as feelings about the language itself. He cites the example of the Ngoni of Africa. code-switching can be used to achieve a shared identity and delimit a group of speakers from all others. He also distinguishes (pp. 50–1) between participating in a speech community and being a fully fledged member of that community: To participate in a speech community is not quite the same as to be a member of it.
Obviously membership in a community depends upon criteria which in the given case may not even saliently involve language and speaking, as when birthright is considered indelible ‘a local unit, characterized for its members by common locality and primary interaction.’ He is prepared to ‘admit exceptions cautiously.’ Brown and Levinson Social scientists use the word ‘group’ in so many ways, as for example in the phrases small group, reference group, corporate group, ethnic group, interest group, ‘Group’ is therefore a relative concept and ‘speech community’ must also be relative. You are a member of one speech community by virtue of the fact that on a particular occasion you identify with X rather than Y when apparently X and Y contrast in a single dimension. EXP: This approach would suggest that there is an English speech community (because there are French and German ones), a Texas speech community (because there are London and Bostonian ones), a Harvard speech community (because there are Oxford and Berkeley ones), a Chicano speech community (because there are Spanish and English ones), and so on.
An individual therefore belongs to various speech communities at the same time, but on any particular occasion will identify with only one of them, the particular identification depending on what is especially important or contrastive in the circumstances. Intersecting Communities The fact that people do use expressions such as New York speech, London speech, and South African speech indicates that they have some idea of how a‘typical’ person from each place speaks, that is, of what it is like to be a memberof a particular speech community somewhat loosely defined. London is a community in some senses but not in others; however, with its 300 languages or more it is in no sense a single speech community (see Baker and Eversley, 2000). It is just too big and fragmented. On the other hand, if we say it must be a composite of small speech communities, we may not be any better off. Are these smaller communities geographical, social, ethnic, religious, or occupational in orientation? That is, how do any linguistic factors we might isolate relate to such social factors? Are the communities static or fluid? However, each residential community has its unique multilingual mix and no language equates in distribution to a specific residential community. Such a situation is not unique.
Many other parts of the world would have some of the same multilingual characteristics; e.g., the Balkans, large areas of the Indian subcontinent, and Papua New Guinea language be used to express some concept of ‘nationhood’ and, in doing so, have tried to standardize and promote a particular language (or particular languages) at the expense of competitors. But such solutions are not always lasting or uncontroversial, as we can see in countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, all of which have recently had to acknowledge in one way or another the presence of people who do not speak the standard variety (or varieties) but who are, nevertheless, very much part of the larger communities. As Bolinger (1975, p. 333) says, There is no limit to the ways in which human beings league themselves together for self-identification, security, gain, amusement, worship, or any of the other purposes that are held in common; consequently there is no limit to the number and variety of speech communities that are to be found in a society. Bolinger: ‘Individuals may belong to several speech communities (which may be discrete or overlapping), just as they may participate in a variety of social settings. Which one or ones individuals orient themselves to at any given moment – which set of social and communicative rules they use – is part of the strategy of communication. each member of a community has a repertoire of social identities and that each identity in a given context is associated with a number of appropriate verbal and nonverbal forms of expression.’ communities of practice: ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagements in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of their joint activity around that endeavor.’ a group of workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent gang, a women’s fitness group, a classroom, etc.
The group chosen to identify with will change according to situation: at one moment religion may be important; at another, regional origin; and at still another, perhaps membership in a particular profession or social class. An individual may also attempt to bond with others because all possess a set of characteristics, or even just a single characteristic, e.g., be of the same gender, or even because all lack a certain characteristic, e.g., not be of white skin color. The bonding can therefore be positive, as when the individuals share some feature or features, or negative, as when the individuals lack some feature or features. Language bonding appears to be no different.
Each individual therefore is a member of many different groups. It is in the best interests of most people to be able to identify themselves on one occasion as members of one group and on another as members of another group. people do not speak alike, nor does any individual always speak in the same way on every occasion. Networks and Repertoires Another way of viewing how an individual relates to other individuals in society is to ask what networks he or she participates in. Network analysis typically deals with structural and content properties of the ties that constitute egocentric personal networks . . . [but] cannot address the issues of how and where linguistic variants are employed . . . to construct local social meanings. It is quite apparent that no two individuals are exactly alike in their linguistic capabilities, just as no two social situations are exactly alike.
An individual also has a speech repertoire; that is, he or she controls a number of varieties of a language or of two or more languages. Quite often, many individuals will have virtually identical repertoires. ‘A speech repertoire is the range of linguistic varieties which the speaker has at his disposal and which he may appropriately use as a member of his speech community.’ In this view each individual has his or her own distinctive verbal repertoire and each speech community in which that person participates has its distinctive speech repertoire; A speaker’s choice of a particular sound, word, or expression marks that speaker in some way. It can say ‘I am like you’ or ‘I am not like you.’
We have seen that ‘speech community’ may be an impossibly difficult concept to define. But in attempting to do so, we have also become aware that it may be just as difficult to characterize the speech of a single individual. Perhaps that second failure follows inevitably from the first. We should be very cautious therefore about definitive statements we may be tempted to make about how aparticular individual speaks, the classic concept of ‘idiolect.’ Just what kinds of data should you collect? How much? In what circumstances? And what kind of claims can you make? It might be desirable to ignore a lot of that mess, as Chomsky insists that we do; but it would be unwise for sociolinguists always to do so since that is, in one sense, what sociolinguistics is all about: trying to work out either the social significance of various uses of language or the linguistic significance of various social factors.
speech community
What are groups?
‘Group’ is a difficult concept to define but one we must try to grasp: must have at least two members but there is really no upper limit to group membership. People can group together for one or more reasons: social, religious, political, cultural, familial, vocational, avocational, etc. The group may be temporary or quasi-permanent and the purposes of its members may change, A group is also more than its members for they may come and go. They may also belong to other groups and may or may not meet face-to-face. The organization of the group may be tight or loose and the importance of group membership is likely to vary among individuals within the group An individual’s feelings of identity are closely re-lated to that person’s feelings about groups in which he or she is a member, feels strong (or weak) commitment (or rejection), and finds some kind of success (or failure). we must be careful in drawing conclusions about individuals on the basis of observations we make about groups. To say of a member of such a group that he or she will always exhibit a certain characteristic behavior is to offer a stereotype. Individuals can surprise us in many ways.The kind of group that sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the speech community. For purely theoretical purposes, some linguists have hypothesized the existence of an ‘ideal’ speech community. This is actually what Chomsky (1965, pp. 3– 4) proposes, his ‘completely homogeneous speech community’ (see p. 3). However, such a speech community cannot be our concern: it is a theoretical construct employed for a narrow purpose. Our speech communities, whatever they are, exist in a ‘real’ world. Consequently, we must try to find some alternative view of speech community, one helpful to investigations of language in society rather than necessitated by abstract linguistic theorizing. Lyons (1970, p. 326) offers a definition of what he calls a ‘real’ speech com-munity: ‘all the people who use a given language (or dialect). It is really quite easy to demonstrate that a speech community is not coterminous with a language: while the
English language is spoken in many places throughout the world, we must certainly recognize that it is also spoken in a wide variety of ways, in speech communities that are almost entirely isolated from one another, e.g., in South Africa, in New Zealand, and among expatriates in China. Alternatively, a recognizably single speech community can employ more than one language: Switzerland, Canada, Papua New Guinea, many African states, and New York City. Alternatively, a recognizably single speech community can employ more than one language: Switzerland, Canada, Papua New Guinea, many African states, and New York City. We must also acknowledge that using linguistic characteristics alone to determine what is or is not a speech community has proved so far to be quite impossible because people do not necessarily feel any such direct relationship between linguistic characteristics A, B, C, and so on, and speech community X.
What we can be sure of is that speakers do use linguistic characteristics to achieve group identity with, and group differentiation from, other speakers, but they use other characteristics as well: social, cultural, political and ethnic, to name a few. Referring to what they call speech markers, Giles, Scherer, and Taylor (1979, p. 351) through speech markers functionally important social categorizations are discriminated, and . . . these have important implications for social organization. For humans, speech markers have clear parallels . . . it is evident that social categories of age, sex, ethnicity, social class, and situation can be clearly marked on the basis of speech, and that such categorization is fundamental to social organization even though many of the categories are also easily discriminated on other bases. Our search must be for criteria other than, or at least in addition to, linguistic criteria if we are to gain a useful understanding of ‘speech community.’ We might require that only a single language be spoken, and that the speakers in the community share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behavior in the community, that is, observe certain linguistic norms. The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms; This definition shifts the emphasis away from an exclusive use of linguisticcriteria to a search for the various characteristics which make individuals feel that they are members of the same community. EXP: Thus, all New York speakers from the highest to lowest status are said to constitute a single speech community because, for example, they agree in viewing presence of post vocalic [r] as prestigious. They also agree on the social value of a large number of other linguistic elements. Southern British English speakers cannot be said to belong to the same speech community as New Yorkers, since they do not attach the same social meanings to, In this sense, ‘speech community’ is a very abstract concept, one likely to create not a few problems, because the particular norms that a community uses may or may not be exclusively linguistic in nature, and even the linguistic norms themselves may vary considerably among small sub-groups.
Gumperz (p. 101) to use the term linguistic community rather than speech community. He proceeds to define that term as follows: a social group which may be either monolingual or multilingual, held together by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weaknesses in the lines of communication. Linguistic communities may consist of small groups bound together by face-to-face contact or may cover large regions, depending on the level of abstraction we wish to achieve. Bloomfield (1933, p. 42) uses to open his chapter on speech communities: ‘a speech community is a group of people who interact by means of speech.’ The extension is provided by the insistence that a group or community is defined not only by what it is but by what it is not: the ‘cut-off’ criterion. Not only must members of the speech community share a set of grammatical rules, but there must also be regular relationships between language use and social structure; i.e., there must be norms which may vary by sub-group and social setting. ‘the speech varieties employed within a speech community form a system because they are related to a shared set of social norms’ (p. 116). Such norms, however, may overlap what we must regard as clear language boundaries.
For example, in Eastern Europe many speakers of Czech, Austrian German, andHungarian share rules about the proper forms of greetings, suitable topics for conversation, and how to pursue these, but no common language. They are united in a Sprachbund, ‘speech area,’ not quite a ‘speech community,’ HYMES Hymes (1974, p. 47) disagrees with both Chomsky’s and Bloomfield’s definitions of a speech community. He points out that it is impossible to equate language and speech community when we lack a clear understanding of the nature of language. He insists that speech communities cannot be defined solely through the use of linguistic criteria (p. 123). The way in which people view the language they speak is also important rules for using a language may be just as important as feelings about the language itself. He cites the example of the Ngoni of Africa. code-switching can be used to achieve a shared identity and delimit a group of speakers from all others. He also distinguishes (pp. 50–1) between participating in a speech community and being a fully fledged member of that community: To participate in a speech community is not quite the same as to be a member of it.
Obviously membership in a community depends upon criteria which in the given case may not even saliently involve language and speaking, as when birthright is considered indelible ‘a local unit, characterized for its members by common locality and primary interaction.’ He is prepared to ‘admit exceptions cautiously.’ Brown and Levinson Social scientists use the word ‘group’ in so many ways, as for example in the phrases small group, reference group, corporate group, ethnic group, interest group, ‘Group’ is therefore a relative concept and ‘speech community’ must also be relative. You are a member of one speech community by virtue of the fact that on a particular occasion you identify with X rather than Y when apparently X and Y contrast in a single dimension. EXP: This approach would suggest that there is an English speech community (because there are French and German ones), a Texas speech community (because there are London and Bostonian ones), a Harvard speech community (because there are Oxford and Berkeley ones), a Chicano speech community (because there are Spanish and English ones), and so on.
An individual therefore belongs to various speech communities at the same time, but on any particular occasion will identify with only one of them, the particular identification depending on what is especially important or contrastive in the circumstances. Intersecting Communities The fact that people do use expressions such as New York speech, London speech, and South African speech indicates that they have some idea of how a‘typical’ person from each place speaks, that is, of what it is like to be a memberof a particular speech community somewhat loosely defined. London is a community in some senses but not in others; however, with its 300 languages or more it is in no sense a single speech community (see Baker and Eversley, 2000). It is just too big and fragmented. On the other hand, if we say it must be a composite of small speech communities, we may not be any better off. Are these smaller communities geographical, social, ethnic, religious, or occupational in orientation? That is, how do any linguistic factors we might isolate relate to such social factors? Are the communities static or fluid? However, each residential community has its unique multilingual mix and no language equates in distribution to a specific residential community. Such a situation is not unique.
Many other parts of the world would have some of the same multilingual characteristics; e.g., the Balkans, large areas of the Indian subcontinent, and Papua New Guinea language be used to express some concept of ‘nationhood’ and, in doing so, have tried to standardize and promote a particular language (or particular languages) at the expense of competitors. But such solutions are not always lasting or uncontroversial, as we can see in countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, all of which have recently had to acknowledge in one way or another the presence of people who do not speak the standard variety (or varieties) but who are, nevertheless, very much part of the larger communities. As Bolinger (1975, p. 333) says, There is no limit to the ways in which human beings league themselves together for self-identification, security, gain, amusement, worship, or any of the other purposes that are held in common; consequently there is no limit to the number and variety of speech communities that are to be found in a society. Bolinger: ‘Individuals may belong to several speech communities (which may be discrete or overlapping), just as they may participate in a variety of social settings. Which one or ones individuals orient themselves to at any given moment – which set of social and communicative rules they use – is part of the strategy of communication. each member of a community has a repertoire of social identities and that each identity in a given context is associated with a number of appropriate verbal and nonverbal forms of expression.’ communities of practice: ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagements in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of their joint activity around that endeavor.’ a group of workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent gang, a women’s fitness group, a classroom, etc.
The group chosen to identify with will change according to situation: at one moment religion may be important; at another, regional origin; and at still another, perhaps membership in a particular profession or social class. An individual may also attempt to bond with others because all possess a set of characteristics, or even just a single characteristic, e.g., be of the same gender, or even because all lack a certain characteristic, e.g., not be of white skin color. The bonding can therefore be positive, as when the individuals share some feature or features, or negative, as when the individuals lack some feature or features. Language bonding appears to be no different.
Each individual therefore is a member of many different groups. It is in the best interests of most people to be able to identify themselves on one occasion as members of one group and on another as members of another group. people do not speak alike, nor does any individual always speak in the same way on every occasion. Networks and Repertoires Another way of viewing how an individual relates to other individuals in society is to ask what networks he or she participates in. Network analysis typically deals with structural and content properties of the ties that constitute egocentric personal networks . . . [but] cannot address the issues of how and where linguistic variants are employed . . . to construct local social meanings. It is quite apparent that no two individuals are exactly alike in their linguistic capabilities, just as no two social situations are exactly alike.
An individual also has a speech repertoire; that is, he or she controls a number of varieties of a language or of two or more languages. Quite often, many individuals will have virtually identical repertoires. ‘A speech repertoire is the range of linguistic varieties which the speaker has at his disposal and which he may appropriately use as a member of his speech community.’ In this view each individual has his or her own distinctive verbal repertoire and each speech community in which that person participates has its distinctive speech repertoire; A speaker’s choice of a particular sound, word, or expression marks that speaker in some way. It can say ‘I am like you’ or ‘I am not like you.’
We have seen that ‘speech community’ may be an impossibly difficult concept to define. But in attempting to do so, we have also become aware that it may be just as difficult to characterize the speech of a single individual. Perhaps that second failure follows inevitably from the first. We should be very cautious therefore about definitive statements we may be tempted to make about how aparticular individual speaks, the classic concept of ‘idiolect.’ Just what kinds of data should you collect? How much? In what circumstances? And what kind of claims can you make? It might be desirable to ignore a lot of that mess, as Chomsky insists that we do; but it would be unwise for sociolinguists always to do so since that is, in one sense, what sociolinguistics is all about: trying to work out either the social significance of various uses of language or the linguistic significance of various social factors.
speech community
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