2.
A community: a group of people with a
shared set of
activities, practices, beliefs, and social
structures.
A speech community: a group of
people who share similar
ideas, uses, and norms of language.
Language variety: refers to a set of
communicative forms and norms for
their use that are restricted to a
particular group, community or
activities
3. They use the language according to a set
of norms to share enough characteristics
of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary
4. Social network
Another way of describing a particular
speech community in terms of relations
among its individual members.
Tight community: all members of one
group interacting with each other.
Looser community: little interaction
among the members of a group
6. Five Key Elements for the Speech
Community
Foundational condition
-Population
-Area
Improving condition
-Facility
-Identification
-Interaction
7. Sociolinguistics: the study of language
use within or among groups of
speakers
Group must have at least two
members. Reasons:
social, religious, political, cultural, fami
lial, vocational, etc.
8. The group may be temporary or quasipermanent
The purposes of its members may change
Its 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
9. What aspects may cause you to belong in
a speech community & not in another?
“Sociolinguistic variables”
Age
Social Class
Education
Occupation/Hobbies
Region/Space
Family
Religion
Gender
Ethnicity/Race
10. Intersecting Communities
People do use expressions indicates
that they have some idea of how a
„typical‟ person from each place
speaks -> to be a member of a
particular speech community
somewhat loosely defined.
E.g.: New York speech, London
speech, South African speech
11. Linguistic Variable
A linguistic item which has identified variants:
Fishin / fishing/ fishen
Car / cah
With / wit / wif
Latin / la?in
thirty / thirdy
Coffee / cowfee
“It was a macao Tom not a parrot!”
He‟s happy / he be happy / he happy
Climbed / clomb
Look for a present for my mom / look for my mom
a present
12. Each person speaks their own “typical” way
according to its place of origin or specific
speech community
Rosen claims that cities cannot be thought of
as a linguistic patchwork maps, ghetto after
ghetto because:
1. languages and dialects have no simple
geographical distribution
2. interaction between them blurs whatever
boundaries might be drawn
13. Network Relationships
open network: provides open access
to its users. Information is often new
and of importance, a (serious) blogger
and visitors of blog.
closed network: mostly strong ties.
Information that flows in those
networks tends to be redundant and
inefficient.
14. 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 is a link between structures of
economic, social and political power and the use of
language.
That variation of the use of language is linked to
other social systems of organization.
15. Do you think Hip Hop music can be
considered a marker of personal
or/and group identity? How? Why?
16. Who forms a part of the community? What do
you share?
What connects you as a group? What is the
community's purpose?
