to figure out a basis for your judgment (and your willingness to judge). Discuss this with the other members of the class; do you share norms about these utterances, and assign them the same social meanings? Can you explain similarities and differences in judgments in terms of speech community membership?
1 He hurt hisself.
2 She done it.
3 The boy run away last week.
4 To whom did you give it?
5 They ain’t got no money left.
6 Can I leave the room now?
7 Just between you and I, I think he’s crazy.
8 There’s twenty people in the room.
9 Stand over there by them boys.
10 Sally dove in at the deep end.
11 That’ll learn you!
12 I’m going to buy me a car.
The concept of the speech community is also somewhat abstract because the particular norms that a community uses may or may not be exclusively linguistic in nature, and along with norms about particular linguistic variables and their social meanings and values, these norms involve evaluations of ways that language is used as well. In other words, we again are using the concept of communicative competence, that is, that language users within a speech community share a sense of social norms in discourse, along with ideas about the social group identities indexed by various varieties or features of language. One example of how discourse patterns may be significant within a speech community is found in Hymes (2004). He presents analyses of narratives from various Native American groups, showing how, even when they are produced in English, there are distinctive features which can be traced back to narrative structures in the Native American languages. These speakers use English in special ways to maintain their separate identities within the dominant English‐speaking community (see chapter 5 for more on social dialects).
Gumperz (1971, 114) expresses much the same view of the importance of shared norms, and also notes that the groups may be of various sizes and formed for various purposes:
Most groups of any permanence, be they small bands bounded by face‐to‐face contact, modern nations divisible into smaller subregions, or even occupational associations or neighborhood gangs, may be treated as speech communities, provided they show linguistic peculiarities that warrant special study.
Thus the relationship between language and social structure is paramount in the development of the concept of the speech community, and this includes the idea that there are different levels of speech communities which correspond to different types of social groups. While we may be able to talk about a speech community of speakers of North American English, we can also identify smaller groups with their own norms for interaction related to specific regions, religious organizations, occupational groups, etc. within this larger speech community.
It is also possible for language users to share certain norms for language when they do not share linguistic systems. For example, in Central Europe many speakers of Czech, Austrian German, and Hungarian 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, but still a community defined in some way by speech (Kurzová 2019). As we can see, then, trying to define the concept of speech community requires us to come to grips with definitions of other concepts, principally group, language (or variety), and norm.
A single speech community also need not contain only a single language or single variety. Gumperz (1971, 101) points out that ‘there are no a priori grounds which force us to define speech communities so that all members speak the same language.’ As we will see in chapter 8, many societies exist in which bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm, and the use of multilingual discourse may be part of the speech community norms. It is such considerations as these that lead Gumperz 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. (Gumperz 1971, 101)
This brings out another aspect of our definition of speech communities: they are defined partly through their relationships with other communities. Internally, a community must have a certain social cohesiveness; externally, its members must find themselves cut off from other communities in certain ways. The factors that bring about cohesion and differentiation will vary considerably from occasion to occasion. You are a member of one speech community by virtue of the fact that on a particular occasion you identify with speakers of European French rather than Quebecois French; in another context you may distinguish between Parisian norms and those from the south of France. Thus, it is context and contrast that help us decide what level of speech community is relevant. This approach would suggest that there is a French speech community (because there are English and German ones), a Parisian speech community (because there are London and Bostonian ones), but also speech communities within the greater metropolitan area of Paris – we will return to this example below when we discuss language attitudes.
These examples based on geography bring up another aspect of speech communities – with increased media interaction, there are many communities comprised of people who are not in geographical proximity within online communities, WhatsApp groups, Twitter followers, etc. (Milburn 2015). This, then, raises the issue of practices and how they are part of community. Jacquemet (2019) argues that speech communities must be redefined to not only include multiple codes but also digital ways of communicating; while previous assumptions about the indexicality of codes need to be re‐examined, a sense of belonging is a salient aspect of group membership. In the following sections, we will explore other ways of defining groups that take these ideas into account.
Communities of Practice
As indicated above, one possible definition of a speech community is simply a group of people who interact regularly. Such groups and communities themselves are 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, women, immigrants, and so on, 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 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., are not categorized as ‘White’). Language bonding appears to be no different. In one case, command of a particular language may be a potent marker and, therefore, help create a sense of community and solidarity with others (e.g., a group of Italian speakers abroad); in another case, where you speak a variety associated with Sardinia or Sicily may divide these same speakers. However, even sharing the same dialect might be of no significance: if the circumstances require you to discuss astrophysics, your knowledge of the terms and concepts of astrophysics may be more important than the regional or social dialect you speak. Alternatively, speakers of Yoruba may find themselves forming a community with speakers of Japanese and Arabic within an English‐speaking foreign‐student speech community
