Sociolinguistic Concepts: Definitions, Concepts, and Theories of the Speech Community

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Outline

The existing different categories used by sociologists to study society include; economic characteristics, class, regional characteristics, and ethnicity. Sociology defines a community as a dimension of shared possessions, knowledge, and behaviors. Linguists however use another dimension of social organization by using speech community to refer to the community. Sociolinguists, therefore, combine the two (Mesthrie, 2000).

Lyons, cited in Wardhaugh (2006), has a different view of a speech community and refers to them as real. The real speech community in this case is all the people who use a given language (or dialect) (Wardhaugh, 2006 p. 120; Hudson, 1996 p. 24). This concept perceives speech communities as those that can overlap in cases where bilingual individuals exist and therefore eliminate the need for cultural or social unity. It is noted that the world of today is characterized by globalization and post-modern cultures and languages. The characteristics of societies, therefore, change with time, and studying such communities requires a definition that includes all aspects.

Introduction

There are so many categories used by sociologists to study society. These categories include; economic characteristics, class, regional characteristics, and ethnicity. According to McMillan & Chavis (1986), Sociology defines a community as a dimension of shared possessions, knowledge, and behaviors. Linguists however use another dimension of social organization by using speech community to refer to the community. Sociolinguists, therefore, combine the two (Mesthrie, 2000).

Sociolinguistic studies consider the community as a speech community. They examine the relationship between language and the social world considering how language creates and respond to structures in society (Nunan & Carter, 2001). Wardhaugh (2006) notes that sociolinguistics is the study of the use of language among or within groups of speakers. However, this definition is not shared by other sociolinguistic scholars who have numerous varied definitions attributed to different concepts and approaches.

All these concepts have led to a finer definition that can be used by sociolinguists for studies and even teaching different communities. This paper outlines a brief literature review of the definitions, concepts, and theories of a speech community. Its use in the current sociolinguistic research is also highlighted.

Literature Review

Speech Communities: Similar and shared concept

Wardhaugh (2006) and other authors such as Hudson (1996) and Maros (2007) have explained so many definitions of speech community according to different theorists who believe differently about what a speech community is. The following definitions are according to different authors who define speech community differently with different concepts:

A speech community is a social group with members having similar/coherent speech characteristics (Wardhaugh, 2006). The concept considers shared knowledge, attitudes, and shared language. Michael Halliday and Dell Hymes, as cited by Hudson (1996), had similar definitions that referred to abstract patterns of variation and shared norms and not shared speech behavior. This kind of definition emphasizes speech community as a group of people who feel they belong together as a community and not as people identified by external characteristics as seen by linguists and outsiders (Hudson, 1996).

Bloomfield, cited in Wardhaugh (2006, p.122), also defined speech community as a group of people who interact using speech. This concept may mean that people can communicate using different languages but still belong to the same community of speech as long as there is a shared language that brings them together (Hudson, 1996). Bloomfields definition recognizes the idea that speech communities are not only identified by what they do but by what they do not do as well (Wardhaugh, 2006).

Wardhaugh (2006) further recognizes that a speech community is not coterminous with a language. He states that so many people in many places across the world speak English, albeit differently among different communities that are completely separated from one another (Wardhaugh, 2006). Examples of such communities are in South Africa, among expatriates in China and New Zealand. Wardhaugh (2006) also notes that one speech community can speak more than one language for example in African states, Canada, Papua New Guinea, Switzerland, and New York.

If speech community is to be defined by linguistic characteristics, then language has to be recognized as a communal possession. Using linguistic characteristics to define speech community however has not been possible due to the difference in the concepts, approaches. It may be concluded that people do not feel directly related to different linguistic characteristics such as accent and tone when it comes to the speech community.

Speech Communities: Differing concepts

Lyons cited in Wardhaugh (2006) has a different view of the people who makes up the speech community, hence referring to the people as real speech community. The real speech community in this case is all the people who use a given language (or dialect) (Wardhaugh, 2006 p. 120; Hudson, 1996 p. 24). It is critical to note that this definition may perceive speech communities as those that can overlap in cases where bilingual individuals exist and therefore eliminate the need for cultural or social unity. Hudson (1996) however notes that it is only possible to consider speech community as people who use a given language or dialect only if it is possible to consider the languages without referring to the community speakers.

The only sure thing in society is that people who speak a certain language use characteristics of the language to obtain group identity with each other and to achieve group differentiation from other speakers. Speakers however do use other characteristics such as culture, political, social, and ethnicity to also identify each other and to differentiate themselves from other speakers.

Wardhaugh (2006) argues that speech community has to be defined using an appropriate criterion and that which does not only consider linguistic characteristics giving the complete definition of a speech community. However, he acknowledges that this definition of a speech community that is dependent on the sociolinguistic purpose, narrowed down to linguistic characteristics is dominant. In this case, a single language can be chosen to define the speech community and the language is also defined for sociolinguistic purposes. Speakers that show certain linguistic norms or share a common feeling about a linguistic behavior belong to the same speech community.

Wardhaugh describes Labovs definition, as cited in Wardhaugh (2006): the speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms (p.121). According to this definition, individuals feel they belong to a community because of the various characteristics including linguistics. This makes the speech community very abstract since specific norms used in those communities may not be related to language and even if they were they vary among small groups (Wardhaugh, 2006).

For example, the Chinese consider themselves one community but different speakers do not consider themselves belonging to that community. Hokkien, cited in Trousdale (2005), for instance, might not express the sense of belonging to a community of Mandarin speakers; hence they would form different speech communities.

Charles Hockett, cited in Husdon (1996), also had a different concept of what speech community is: basing his argument that speech community is characterized by each language. As quoted in Hudson (1996 p. 24), Charles Hockett states, each language defines a speech community: the whole set of people who communicate with each other either directly or via the common language. According to this concept, communication within the community is used as a criterion to define speech community. This means that if two communities speak the same language, yet they have no contact with each other, they would belong to different speech communities (Hudson, 1996).

Gumperzs (1982) concept of a speech community, according to Wardhaugh (2006) and Hudson (1996), gives two definitions of what a speech community is. The first prefers referring to speech community as a linguistic community which defines a community by its relationship with other communities. It considers that community members differ in certain ways from other communities externally and have a social cohesiveness internally; a concept that recognizes Bloomfields definition. It defines the linguistic community as, a social group which may be either monolingual or multilingual (Carlin, 2008). The community is considered one due to communication lines weaknesses from and with surrounding areas and the frequency of social interaction patterns (Hudson, 1996).

The second definition includes another characteristic of speech communities which indicates that speech communities should have specific linguistic differences that separate them among themselves and from the external communities. This disqualifies an earlier definition that stated that speech communities are defined by the languages so that one speech community is defined by one language. It also highlights that a speech community is inherently cohesive through a common language variety. The two definitions also put much emphasis on interaction and communication contrasting the idea that speech communities overlap due to bilingualism as earlier stated (Hudson, 1996).

Another approach of what speech community is advocated by Robert Le Page, cited by Hudson (1996). In this definition, speech community is referred to as societal groups with distinctive social and speech characteristics. These groups according to Hudson (1996) cannot be identified by objective methods used by sociologists, but are those just perceived by the speakers to existing. This definition also indicates that a group may represent certain social types and does not necessarily need to consider the whole population.

The groups in this case overlap but due to multilingualism and not bilingualism as previous definitions stated (Diller, 2008). The individuals group themselves in various multi-dimensions defined by groups found in the society. Each group has linguistic items that make up their language so that other groups can contribute to the linguistic items in their language (Diller, 2008). These personal groupings are considered speech communities by Bolinger Dwight, cited in Hudson (1996). Based on the overlap existing between different groups and how the groups items are classified to form items of another groups language, complexity is created in Bolingers speech community (Hudson, 1996).

Speech community definition has emerged from simple definitions such as, all the people who use a given language (or dialect) and a group of people who interact using speech; to speech community definition that does not only refer to term speech community but also refers to groups as with similar speech and social characteristics (Mendes, 2009). The definition of these groups has led to a more complex definition that considers particular groups in society as speech communities. The groups have specific ways of classifying items of other groups into the linguistic system forming their language identity.

Conclusion

The world of today is characterized by globalization which is characterized by post-modern cultures and languages. The characteristics of societies, therefore, change with time, and studying such communities requires a definition that includes all aspects. Language characteristics also form part of speech community definition.

TESOL teachers need to know the language characteristics of a community for effective delivery of teaching services. Knowledge of how the languages arise in a speech community (Nunan & Carter, 2001) as defined by Bolinger is therefore very important. This definition allows the TESOL teacher to identify the linguistic changes in English as well as other languages to give room for a more specific approach to language teaching, taking into consideration the cultural and language orientation of the learner/s. There are three areas of research that are very important to the TESOL teacher. These are language variation, languages in contact, and linguistic relativity all of which are studied in sociolinguistic research (Nunan & Carter, 2001).

The above paper has described the definition of speech community according to several theorists giving concepts for each definition. These definitions assist sociolinguistics in studying language characteristics about social characteristics of different communities.

Reference List

Carlin, E. B. (2008). Speech community formation: a Sociolinguistic Profile of the Trio of Suriname: Overview of the Trio language. New Indian Guide. Vol. 72 (1&2) pp 4-42.

Diller, A. (2008). Tai-Kadai Languages. London, UK: Routledge.

Gumperz, J. (1982). Language and social identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hudson, R. A. (1996). Sociolinguistics. Ed2. England, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Maros, M. (2007). The Social Functions of Complaints in Malay Speech Community. Abstract for SEALS, 17 (2).

Mendes, B. R. (2009). Speech Communities, Communities of Practice and Sociolinguistic Research in Quilombola Communities. Web.

McMillan, D.W., & Chavis D.M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. American Journal of Community Psychology, 18, pp. 16-17.

Mesthrie, R. (2000). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

Nunan, D. & Carter, R. (2001). The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, 4^th ed. England, UK: Cambridge University Press. Web.

Trousdale, G. (2005). The social context of Kentish raising: Issues in old English social linguistics. International Journal of English Studies. Vol 5 (1) pp 59-76.

Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An introduction to sociolinguistics. 5^th ed. Ontario, Canada: Wiley-Blackwell.

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