Speech community

The adoption of the concept of the "speech community" as a unit of linguistic analysis emerged in the 1960s. John Gumperz John Gumperz described how dialectologists had taken issue with the dominant approach in historical linguistics that saw linguistic communities as homogeneous and localized entities in a way that allowed for drawing neat tree diagrams based on the principle of "descent with modification" and shared innovations. Dialectologists realized that dialect traits spread through diffusion and that social factors were instead decisive in how that happened. They also realized that traits spread as waves from centers and that often several competing varieties would exist in some communities. This insight prompted Gumperz to problematize the notion of the linguistic community as the community that carries a single speech variant, and instead to seek a definition that could encompass heterogeneity. This could be done by focusing on the interactive aspect of language, because interaction in speech is the path along which diffused linguistic traits travel. Gumperz defined the community of speech: Gumperz here identifies two important components of the speech community: members share both a set of linguistics forms and a set of social norms. Gumperz also sought to set up a typological framework for describing how linguistic systems can be in use within a single speech community. He introduced the concept of linguistic range, the degree to which the linguistic systems of the community differ so that speech communities can be multilingual, diglossic, multidialectal (including sociolectal stratification), or homogeneous, depending on the degree of difference among the different language systems used in the community. Secondly the notion of compartmentalization described the degree to which the use of different varieties are set off from each other as discrete systems in interaction (e.g. diglossia where varieties correspond to specific social contexts, or multilingualism where varieties correspond to discrete social groups within the community), or they are habitually mixed in interaction (e.g. code-switching, bilingualism, syncretic language). Noam Chomsky Gumperz's formulation was, however, effectively overshadowed by Noam Chomsky's redefinition of the scope of linguistics as being : William Labov Another influential conceptualization of the linguistic community was that of William Labov, which can be seen as a hybrid of the Chomskyan structural homogeneity and Gumperz's focus on shared norms informing variable practices. Labov wrote: Like that of Gumperz, Labov's formulation stressed that a speech community was defined more by shared norms than by shared linguistic forms. However, like Chomsky, Labov also saw each of the formally distinguished linguistic varieties within a speech community as homogeneous, invariant and uniform. The model worked well for Labov's purpose of showing that African American Vernacular English can be seen not as a structurally-degenerate form of English but rather as a well-defined linguistic code with its own particular structure. ==Critique==

Probably because of their considerable explanatory power, Labov's and Chomsky's understandings of the speech community became widely influential in linguistics. But gradually a number of problems with those models became apparent. Firstly, it became increasingly clear that the assumption of homogeneity inherent in Chomsky and Labov's models was untenable. The African American speech community, which Labov had seen as defined by the shared norms of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), was shown to be an illusion, as ideological disagreements about the status of AAVE among different groups of speakers attracted public attention. Secondly, the concept of the speech community was large-scale communities. By extending the concept, Gumperz's definition could no longer be evoked. Thirdly, Chomsky's and Labov's models made it clear that intrapersonal variation is common. The choice of linguistic variant is often a choice made within a specific speech context. The force of those critiques with the concept of "speech communities" appeared because of many contradictions. Some scholars recommended abandoning the concept altogether and instead conceptualizing it as "the product of the communicative activities engaged in by a given group of people." Others acknowledged the community's ad hoc status as "some kind of social group whose speech characteristics are of interest and can be described in a coherent manner". ==Practice theory==

Practice theory, as developed by social thinkers such as Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Michel de Certeau, and the notion of the community of practice as developed by Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger has been applied to the study of the language community by linguists William Hanks and Penelope Eckert. Eckert aimed at an approach to sociolinguistic variation that did not include any social variable (e.g. class, gender, locality). Instead, she built a model that could locate variables that show significant issue to the group of individuals. For Eckert, the crucial defining characteristics of the community is persistent through time to comprehend together. Hanks's concept of the linguistic community is different from that of Eckert and Gumperz, and studies the ways that shared practice produces linguistic meaning. Hanks studies how linguistic practices are related to varieties, which are produced through shared practices. ==Language variation==

The notion of speech community is most generally used as a tool to define a unit of analysis within which to analyse language variation and change. Stylistic features differ among speech communities based on factors such as the group's ethnicity and social status, common interests and the level of formality expected within the group and by its larger society. Common interests and the level of formality also result in stylistic differences among speech communities. In Western culture, for example, employees at a law office would likely use more formal language than a group of teenage skateboarders because most Westerners expect more formality and professionalism from practitioners of law than from an informal circle of adolescent friends. This special use of language by certain professions for particular activities is known in linguistics as register; in some analyses, the group of speakers of a register is known as a discourse community, while the phrase "speech community" is reserved for varieties of a language or dialect that speakers inherit by birth or adoption. ==See also==