SPEECH COMMUNITIES

SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• Language is both an individual possession and a social possession. This leads us to the
idea of a speech community. In the social context, we would expect; therefore, that
certain individuals would behave linguistically like other individuals. We need to think
about what it means, and what its implications are. In fact, it means that they might be
said to speak the same language or the same dialect or the same variety, i.e., to employ
the same code, and in that respect to be members of the same speech community.
CONT.

• The e term speech community is derived from the German Sprachgemeinschaft. Another definition
of the term speech community is, “A speech community is a group of people who share a set of
linguistic norms and expectations with regard to how their language should be used”.

• Speech community is a term in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology used to describe a

group of people who share the same language, speech characteristics, and ways of interpreting
communication. ... They help people define themselves as individuals and community members
and identify (or misidentify) others.
•
CONT.

• However, there are certain ambiguities related to the term; and exactly how to define
speech community is debated in the literature. Definitions of speech community tend to
involve varying degrees of emphasis on the following:
•   shared community membership
•   shared linguistic communication
CONT.

• Since sociolinguistics is the study of language use within or among groups of speakers, the term
‘group’ gathers significance. However, what are groups? This is a difficult concept. So, instead of
defining a group we may look at it in terms of its characteristics. Following are the characteristics of a
group:
•   A group must have at least two members but there is really no upper limit.
•   People can group together for one or more reasons: social, religious, political, cultural,
• familial, vocational, avocational etc.
•   A group may be more than its members for individuals may come and go.
•   They may also belong to other groups and may or may not even meet face-to-face.
•   The organization of the group may be tight or loose.
CONT.

• Lyons (1970) offers a definition of what he calls a ‘real’ speech community ‘all the
people who use a given language (or dialect).’ However, that really shifts the issue to
making the definition of a language (or of a dialect) also the definition of a speech
community. So, 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 (p. 326).
SOME DEFINITIONS OF SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• Bloomfield (1933) defines a speech community as ‘a group of people who interact by means of
speech’. According to Gumperz (1971), a speech community is “any human aggregate
characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and
set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage” (p. 42).
• According to Labov (1972), it is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language
elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms. These norms may be observed
in overt types of evaluative behaviour, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation
which are invariant with respect to particular levels of usage. (p.120–1).
• The essential criterion thus is some significant dimension of experience has to be shared,
and for the ‘speech community’ that the shared dimension be related to ways in which
members of the group use, value or interpret language (Troike, 2003). According to
Patrick (2002), the kind of group that sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is
called the speech community. Lyons (1970) offers a definition of what he calls a ‘real’
speech community as ‘all the people who use a given language (or dialect).’ So, from all
these definitions, it is easy to demonstrate that a speech community is not coterminous
with a language.
CONT.

• Now the issue is that the English language is spoken in many places throughout the world. So,
should it be considered as one language or one variety because it is also spoken in a wide variety of
ways i.e. in speech communities that are almost entirely isolated from one another? For example, it
is spoken in South Africa, New Zealand, and among expatriates in China. We must ask ourselves in
what sense this modern lingua franca produces a speech community that might be of interest to us,
i.e., ask what else is shared than the very language itself. Alternatively, a recognizably single speech
community can employ more than one language such as Switzerland, Canada, Papua New Guinea,
many African states, and New York City. Furthermore, if speech communities are defined solely by
their linguistic characteristics, we must acknowledge the inherent circularity of any such definition
in that language itself is a communal possession.
INTERSECTING COMMUNITIES

• We need to think about the fact that people do use expressions such as New York speech,
South African speech which 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 member of a particular speech
community.
EXAMPLE

• Urbanization is a great eroder of linguistic frontiers. The result is the creation of

thousands of bilingual and to a certain extent bidialectal speakers on a scale and of a
diversity unprecedented in our history. Which dialect of English they learn depends
mainly on their social class position in this country. It is a common practice to talk of the
‘target language’ of a second-language learner. In London it will be a moving target,
though undoubtedly most by virtue of their social position will have as their chief model
London working-class speech.
• 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. 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?

• This is a difficult question to answer. Another set of questions that arises is that if they are static,
how they maintain themselves. If they are fluid, what inferences must we draw concerning any
concept we might have of ‘speech community’? Are their boundaries strong and clear or are they
weak and permeable? London is no different from most large cities anywhere in the world, a
world which is increasingly a world of large cities, heterogeneously populated. Coupland (2007)
says ‘cities challenge the view that one discrete social style e.g., a dialect is associated with one
place, which was the basic assumption in the analysis of rural dialects.’ So, it is difficult to relate
the concept of ‘speech community’ directly to language or languages spoken, or for that matter
even to groups and norms. An interesting example is of Tukano.
• One has to take as a marriage partner, someone who speaks an entirely different
language; whereas the female has to join the male’s household. So, here multilingualism
is endemic and normal. Each residential community has its unique multilingual mix. No
language equates in distribution to a specific residential community. 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.
LET US INSTEAD THINK OF GROUPS.

• Consequently, a person may belong at any one time to many different groups depending on
the particular ends in view. At home, a person may live in a bilingual setting and switch
easily back and forth between two languages. Let this be a female person – may shop in
one of the languages, but work in the other. Her accent in one of the languages which
indicates her identity as an immigrant. Her accent in the other language shows that she is a
native of region Y in country Z. She has extensive technical training in second language.
• Bolinger states, ‘Individuals may belong to several speech communities (which may be
discrete or overlapping), just as they may participate in a variety of social settings.
THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE:

• Eckert and Ginet (1998) define it as ‘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 community of practice is at the same time its members
and what its members are doing to make them a community. The examples are a group of
workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent gang, a women’s fitness group, a
classromm etc.
• Eckert and Ginet (1998) define it as ‘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 community of practice is at the same time its members
and what its members are doing to make them a community. The examples are a group of
workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent gang, a women’s fitness group, a
classromm etc.
• So, the focus is on communities of practice, not individuals as some disconnected entities
in social space or as a location in a network, or as a member of a particular group. It is
such communities of practice that shape individuals, provide them with their identities,
and often circumscribe what they can do. Groups and communities themselves are also
ever changing, their boundaries are often porous, and internal relationships shift. They
must constantly reinvent and recreate themselves. Today’s middle class, youth, New
Yorkers, immigrants etc. are not yesterday’s nor will they be tomorrow’s. The group
chosen to identify with will also change according to situation: at one moment religion
may be important; at another, regional origin; and at still another, perhaps a profession.
REJECTING THE IDEA OF SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• For purely theoretical purposes, some linguists have hypothesized the existence of an ‘ideal’ speech
community. This is actually what Chomsky (1965) proposes as ‘completely homogeneous speech-
community’. However, such a speech community is a theoretical construct employed for a narrow
purpose. Mostly our speech communities, whatever they are, exist in a ‘real’ world. Consequently, we
need an alternative view of speech community i.e. to study language in society rather than necessitated
by abstract linguistic theorizing. Using linguistic characteristics alone to determine what is or is not a
speech community has proved so far to be quite impossible. Why? 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.
• The examples are: social, cultural, political and ethnic. 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. Perhaps the concept of ‘speech
community’ is less useful than it might be. The question is should we return to the
concept of ‘group’ as any set of individuals united for a common end? Should we stick to
the concept of ‘speech communities’ or ‘groups’ or ‘communities of practice’? Each
choice has its own consequences.
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. What does it mean? It means how and on what
occasions does a specific individual A interact now with B, then with C, and then again
with D?
Let us see how does it operate!
WHAT IS LINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE?

• 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. So, ‘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.’The concept of repertoire is more useful when applied to
individuals rather than to groups. We can use it to describe the communicative
competence of individual speakers because each person has a distinctive speech
repertoire.
• Platt and Platt (1975) propose a distinction between speech repertoire and verbal
repertoire. According to them the term speech repertoire is used for the repertoire of
linguistic varieties utilized by a speech community which its speakers, as members of the
community may appropriately use. On the other hand, verbal repertoire refers to the
linguistic varieties which are at a particular speaker’s disposal.