Lesson 3.

Communities of Language Users

Time Frame: 5 hours

Introduction
In this chapter, students will learn about the different communities of language users.
You will understand the conversational interaction by identifying some of the ways in which
language varies based on cultural context. You will also introduce to the roles of the
accommodation and code-switching play in communication. Speech community is a
regionally or socially defined social group the members of which share a language variety
(spoken or signed).

Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
 Discuss some of the social norms that guide conversational interaction;
 Identify some of the ways in which language varies based on cultural context;
 Explain how language affect how someone communicate to others.

Pre-test:
Answer the following:
1. In your own words, what is speech community?
2. Do you have to consider norms in a conversational interaction?
3. How does speech community affect your communication with others?
4. Have you experience being discriminated due to language barrier?

Content
The principle unit of analysis in the ethnography of community is the speech
community. A speech community is a group of speakers who share a language and patterns
of language use. Members of the community speak more often with each other than they do
with members outside the community. This pattern of behavior is known as communicative
isolation. Communicative isolation is increased by social, cultural, economic, and
geographical factors. Consequently, over time the speech community develops
characteristics of language and language use that are different from those of another
community.
Individuals typically belong to several speech communities. The family is a small
community. Another would be comprised of the colleagues of the parents at work. A third
would be the peer group to which the teen belongs, which isolates itself in terms of identity
and language from the surrounding speech community. Individuals adjust their language as
they come in to contact with members of different communities.
Focused speech community is one where there is wide agreement about the
characteristics of the shared language variety; a small town from which people have not
moved and into which people have not moved would be likely focused with respect to the
speech norm.
Diffuse speech community is one where there is a less-defined set of characteristics
of the shared language variety; a large city where there are many different social classes and
a great deal of mobility would likely not have a particularly well-defined speech variety;
although people have a stereotypical view of what Bostonian is, or how people in New York
speak, these cities are actually diffuse speech communities; the members of the different
communities within the cities have certain characteristics in common (such as "r-dropping" in
Boston), but the smaller enclaves within the city have their own characteristics
Speech norm is the unstated rules for use of a language that are shared by members
of a speech community.
Social network is the social relationships that exists among all of the members of a
given group; the analysis of social networks addresses this problem by analyzing more closely
the complex nature of social relationships and the language patterns associated with those
relationships.
Network strength is the close-knit nature of relationships among members of a
speech community are measured by analyzing density and multiplexity; the more dense and
multiplex a community, the more likely those members are to speak with each other and to
share a language variety.
Density is a measure of number of ties among members in a community; if you have
five friends, none of whom know each other, then you are part of a loose network; if two of
your friends know each other, the network is slightly more dense; the densest possible
network would be if you and all of your friends know each other
 Multiplexity - a measure of the kinds of ties among members in a community, derived
by noting the ways in which individuals are related; in a tight community, your boss might
also be your father-in-law and the president of a local community group.
Sociolinguistic marker (referred to as "speech marker" in Wardaugh) is a
sociolinguistic variable the variants of which are distributed according to both social class and
social context; the hypothetical example below illustrates a common pattern of distribution
of use of a prestige variant (such as "going to" instead of "gonna;" avoidance of double
negatives; use of certain prestigious pronunciations, such as "running" instead of "runnin’,"
or "those things" instead of "doze tings;" in New York, pronouncing the "r" in "car" instead of
saying "caw"); the prestige linguistic variant is used more frequently by higher social classes;
all social classes use the prestige form with greater frequency in more formal contexts. Social
conventions, norms of social appropriateness, are product of communities of language users.
Speech community is composed of people who use the same linguistic code. People
who identify themselves as members of a social group (family, neighborhood, professional or
ethnic affiliation, nation) acquire common ways of viewing the world through the interactions
with other members of the same group. These views are reinforced through institutions like
the family, the school, the workplace , the church, the government. Discourse communities
refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their
social needs. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of their language
(for example, teenage talk, professional jargon, political rhetoric) differentiate them from
others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present the information,
the style with which they interact – their discourse accent. E.g. reaction to the compliment.
The Americans – Thank you, the French – downplay the compliment and minimize its value.
The diachronic view of culture focuses on the way in which a social group represents itself
and others through its material productions over time – its technological achievements,
its monuments, its works of art, its popular culture – that punctuate the development of
the historical identity. This material culture is reproduced and preserved through
institutional mechanisms that are also part of the culture, like museums, schools, public
libraries, governments, corporations and the media. Language plays a major role in the
perpetuation of culture, particularly in its printed form.
Imagined communities
These two layers of culture combined, the social (synchronic) and the historical
(diachronic), have often been called the sociocultural context of language study. The
third layer is imagination. Discourse communities are characterized not only by facts
and artifacts, but by common dreams, fulfilled and unfulfilled imaginings. These
imaginings are mediated through the language.

Insiders/outsiders
To identify themselves as members of a community, people have to define
themselves jointly as insiders against the others, outsiders. There is a hegemonic effect
of dominant cultures in representing the Other. Knowledge itself is colored by the social
and historical context in which it is acquired and disseminated. In the social, the historic,
and the imagined dimension, culture is heterogeneous. Members of the same discourse
community all have different biographies and life experiences, they may differ in age,
gender, or ethnicity, they have different political opinions. Cultures change over time.

In summary, culture can be defined as membership in a discourse community that

shares a common social space and history, and common imaginings.
1. Culture is always the result of human intervention in the biological process of nature.
2. Culture both liberates and constrains. It liberates by investing the randomness of
nature with meaning, order, and rationality and by providing safeguards against chaos;
it constrains by imposing a structure on nature and by limiting the range of possible
meanings created by the individual.
3. Culture is the product of socially and historically situated discourse communities, that
are to a large extent imagined communities, created and shaped by language.
4. A community’s language and its material achievements represent a social patrimony
and a symbolic capital that serve to perpetuate relationship of power and domination;
they distinguish insiders from outsiders.
5. Cultures are fundamentally heterogeneous and changing, they are a constant site of
struggle for recognition and legitimation.
Self-evaluation
Learning Paper #3
Based on your experiences, what are the impacts of having different speech community into
your life? In what way? Justify your answer.

Review of Concepts
 A speech community is a group of speakers who share a language and patterns of
language use.
 Communicative isolation is increased by social, cultural, economic, and geographical
factors.
 Focused speech community is one where there is wide agreement about the
characteristics of the shared language variety; a small town from which people have
not moved and into which people have not moved would be likely focused with
respect to the speech norm.
 Diffuse speech community is one where there is a less-defined set of characteristics
of the shared language variety; a large city where there are many different social
classes and a great deal of mobility would likely not have a particularly well-defined
speech variety.
 Speech norm is the unstated rules for use of a language that are shared by members
of a speech community.
 Social network is the social relationships that exists among all of the members of a
given group; the analysis of social networks addresses this problem by analyzing more
closely the complex nature of social relationships and the language patterns
associated with those relationships.
 Network strength is the close-knit nature of relationships among members of a
speech community are measured by analyzing density and multiplexity;
 Density is a measure of number of ties among members in a community; if you have
five friends, none of whom know each other, then you are part of a loose network;
 Multiplexity - a measure of the kinds of ties among members in a community, derived
by noting the ways in which individuals are related; in a tight community, your boss
might also be your father-in-law and the president of a local community group.
  Sociolinguistic marker (referred to as "speech marker" in Wardaugh) is a
sociolinguistic variable the variants of which are distributed according to both social
class and social context
 Discourse communities refer to the common ways in which members of a social group
use language to meet their social needs.
 These two layers of culture combined, the social (synchronic) and the historical
(diachronic), have often been called the sociocultural context of language study. The
third layer is imagination.
 Insiders/outsiders- To identify themselves as members of a community, people have
to define themselves jointly as insiders against the others, outsiders.

Post-test:
1. In your own perspective, why is it important to have a wide agreement about the
characteristics of the shared language variety?
2. How does speech community affect someone’s way of communicating others?