Discourse Communities

Discourse Communities
• Discourse Community:
– “A social group that communicates, in part, using
written texts but also shares common goals,
values, writing standards, specialized vocabulary,
and specialized genres” (GFC, 2013, p. 742).
 Defining Discourse Communities
In "The Concept of Discourse Community," John Swales proposes six
defining characteristics of discourse communities:
– A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
– A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among
its members.
– A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to
provide information and feedback.
– A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres
in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
– In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some
specific lexis.
– A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable
degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. (pp. 471-473)
 Conventions
• Conventions:
– “The traditional, commonly understood,
unspoken, or official guidelines or rules of
communication or behavior in discourse
communities” (GFC, 2013, p. 742).
• Conventions can include rules governing
language.
 Genres
• Genres:
– “Different kinds or categories of writing,
composition, or production” (GFC, 2013, p. 742)
• In this class, genre does not mean fantasy, sci-
fi, horror, etc.
 Discourse Communities
• Family • Clubs, frats, sororities,
• Friends etc.
• Work • Hobbies (crochet,
• School knitting, woodworking,
• Church etc.)
• Military • Fantasy football
• Online Games (MMORPGS) • Online communities
• Video Games
• Bands/Music scenes
• Comics/Manga
• Book clubs
• Sports
SPEECH
COMMUNITY

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 CONTENT
Introduction -Key terms
Definitions of speech community
Role of a single person within/out side the speech
community
How do we measure an individual’s participation in
the social group/speech community?
Sociolinguistics
Group
Social network
Internal/external language
Five key elements for the speech community
Intersecting communities
Network relationship
Language variation
conclusion 8
Language is both an
individual possession
and social possession.
Speech community is
hard to define because
it is not a true definition.

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 Community
“A group of people with a shared
set of activities,practices,beliefs
and social structure”

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A speech
community
“A group of people who share
similar ideas, uses and norms
of language”
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Language variety
“Refer to a set of communicative
forms and norms for their use that
are restricted to a particular group,
community or activities”

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DEFINITIONS
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Lyons (1970):
"All people who use a give language or dialect“

Labov (1972):
"Participation in a set of shared norms; these norms may be
observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the
uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant in
respect to particular levels of usage”

Gumperz (1971):
"A social group which may be either monolingual or multilingual,
held together by frequency of social interaction and set off from
the surrounding areas by weaknesses in the lines of
communication"

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We want to pay attention to the use of the
colloquial speech when establishing the role of
a single person within/outside the speech
community. By looking at extreme, we can
define the core of the group

 Interlopers - people who move to a

new dialect area. How well do they fit
in? Depends on their age, ability,
motivation/desire

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 Insiders - people at the very core of the
social group. They're highly integrated,
involved in the group, but not necessarily
group leaders. They are the leading force of
spreading linguistic change.

 Outsiders - they are not part of the

mainstream, isolated, considered
uncool. Also called 'lames'. Tend to be
linguistically conservative, don't use slang,
don't use vernacular -- less 'local'-sounding.
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 Aspirers - social ambitions beyond the
"immediate domain" (the local
group). Tend to be more standard.
 

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How do we measure an individual's
participation in the social group/speech
community?

1) Social Network Analysis

emphasizes the individual's place within a
social network to seek to account for the
variability in individual linguistic behavior
rather than large scale characterization of
the community

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 This is observing the micro-level social
clusters. As a rule, the stronger a
person's network ties to a local group,
the stronger the participation in the
local dialect.
 
 

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 GROUP

 Group must have at least two

members.
 There are different purposes that they
get together.
Social
Religious
Political
Cultural

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 Group
 The group may be temporary or permanent.
 The purposes of it’s members may change.
 It’s members 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
 The importance of group membership is likely
to vary among individuals within the group.
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 Social network
Any way of describing a particular speech
community in terms of relations among it’s
individual members.

Tight community:
 All members of one group interacting with
each other.
Looser community:
 Little interaction among the members of a
group.
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 Internal/External language

External Language:
 All that happens among people in
social context.

Internal Language:
 All which happens inside our minds.

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 Five key elements for the
speech community
Foundational condition
Population
Area

Improving condition
Facility
Identification
Interaction
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Intersecting communities
 People do use expressions,idiolectes
that they have some idea of how a
“typical” person from each place
speakers to be a member of a particular
speech community somewhat loosely
defined.
Ex- New York speech
London speech
South African speech
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 Network relationship
Open network:
 Provides open access to its users.
Information is often new and of importance.

Closed network:
 Mostly strong ties, Information that flows in
these networks tend to be unnecessary and
inefficient.

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Language Variation
 The notion of speech community is most
generally used as a tool to define a unit of
analysis within which to analyze language
variation and change.

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 Conclusion
 It is important to remember that group is
a relative concept with respect to speech
community.
 Also that an individual belongs to various
speech communities, at the same time,
but he/she will identify with only one of
them.
 There are many definitions for speech
community which are all different too
simple and too complex.
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The main difference between discourse
and speech communities is that discourse
communities separate the existing people
into groups whereas speech communities
are looking to include outsiders. 

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Thank you

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