In spite of the fact that the speech community is something that
is difficult to define accurately but the study of the speech community is
central to the understanding of human language. The kind of group that
sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the speech
community. (Patrick,2002) A speech community is defined as a group of people
who speak the same language and share the same words and grammar rules. For
instance, English language speakers throughout the world. Speech communities
may be huge locales like an urban area with a common, distinct accent (think of
a Boston with its dropped r,s) or little units like families and companions
(think of a nickname for sibling). They help people characterized themselves as
individuals and community members. The study of speech communities has
therefore interested linguists for some time, at least since Leonard Bloomfield
wrote a chapter on speech communities in his book Language(1933:ch.3). For
absolutely hypothetical purposes, the existence of an "ideal" speech
has been hypothesized by a few linguists This is actually what Chomsky (1965,
pp.3-4) proposes, his 'completely homogeneous speech community'. Such a speech
community cannot be our concern in any case: it is a hypothetical development
utilized for a contracted purpose. Our speech communities, whatever they are,
exist in a genuine world. Subsequently, we must attempt to discover a few
alternative views to the speech community, one supportive to the examination of
language in society instead of required by unique linguistic theorizing.
However, there have been impressive confusions and disagreements over exactly
what a speech community is, as the taking after overview appears.
(1) John Lyons (1970,p.326) defines what he calls a real
"real" speech community:
"All the
people who use a given language(or dialect)"
Read: Diglossia and its Examples
According to this definition, speech communities may overlap
(where there are bilingual individuals) and require not to have any social or
cultural unity. It is conceivable to delimit speech communities in this sense
as it was to the extent that it is conceivable to delimit languages and
dialects without referring to the community that speaks them(R.A.Hudsen,1996).
It is truly very simple to illustrate that a speech community isn't coterminous
with a dialect: whereas the English dialect is spoken in numerous places all
through the world, we must certainly recognize that it is moreover spoken in a
wide mixture of ways, in speech communities that are almost entirely
disconnected from one another, e.g., in South Africa, in New Zealand, and among
expatriates in China. We must also acknowledge that using linguistic
characteristics alone to determine what is or is not a speech community has
proved so far to be quite impossible because people do not necessarily feel any
such direct relationship between linguistic characteristics A, B, C, and so on,
and speech community X.
(2) A more complex definition is given by Charles Hockett(1958:8):
"Each language defines a speech community: the whole set of
people who communicate with each other, either directly or indirectly via the
common language."
Here the basis of communication inside the community is included
so that if two communities both spoke the same dialect but have no interaction
at all they would count as distinctive speech communities. According to this
definition, interaction is very important if two communities do not
contact(either directly or indirectly) each other then they will be
considered as two separate speech communities although they speak the same
dialect of a language. For example; if people of Pakistan and India speak the
same dialect of the English language but they interact neither directly nor
indirectly then they will be taken as two different speech communities.
(3) another definition shifts the stress completely from shared
dialect to communication. A simple form of it was given by Leonard
Bloomfield(1933:42):
"A speech community is a group of people who interact by
means of speech."
This leaves open the possibility that some interact by means of
one language and others by means of another. Bloomfield recognized that, in
addition to speaking the same language, these people also agree about what is
considered “proper” or “improper” uses of language (ibid.:155). The
single-language, or single-variety, criterion is also a very suspicious one.
Gumperz (1971, p.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.’
Many societies have existed and still exist in which bilingualism
and multilingualism are normal. For example, early in the year, 2000 London was
judged to be the most ‘international’ of all cities in the world based on the
number of different languages spoken there – over 300. It is such
considerations as these which lead Gumperz (p. 101) to use the term linguistic
community rather than a 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."
In this definition, then, communities are defined partially through their relationships with other communities. Individuals will therefore shift their sense of community as different factors come into play. Leonard Bloomfield(1933,42) uses to open his chapter on speech communities: ‘a speech community is a group of people who interact by means of speech.’ The extension is provided by the insistence that a group or community is defined not only by what it is but by what it is not: the ‘cut-off’ criterion.
(4) A later definition by Gumperz, however, introduces the requirement that there should be some specifically linguistic differences between the members of the speech community and those outside it (1968):
The speech community: any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language use.
According to this definition, there is no requirement that there
should be just one language per speech community. The effect of emphasizing
communication and interaction as in these two last definitions is that
different speech communities will tend not to overlap much, in differentiating
with the prior definitions where overlap naturally comes about from
bilingualism.
(5) For Fishman (1971), a Speech community is a sub type of
community:
“All of whose members share at least a single speech variety and
the norms for its appropriate use”.
In this definition, he put forward the concept of speech
variety and norms of usage which was a great step forward.
(6) William Labov (1972a;120) defined it as:
"Participation in a set of shared norms; these norms may be
observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of
abstract patterns of variation which are invariant in respect to particular
levels of usage"
He proposed the first definition of a speech community and
his perspective was most influential in that it emphasized linguistic
production, social perception, and evaluation. It gave an insight into the
essence of this term and has been followed by all the subsequent scholars.
(7) For Hymes ( 1974 ),
however, the Speech community is “not a naive attempt to use
language to compass a social unit”, but rather “an object defined for purposes
of linguistic inquiry”, not to be confused with “attributes of the counterpart
of that object in social life… It postulates the unit of the description as a
social, rather than linguistic, entity” Then, Hymes (1986) proposes to divide
the speech community into individual communities and groups, which is
considered a descriptive theory including two aspects: a community that shares
"rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech and rules for the
interpretation of at least one linguistic variety". Thus, he was concerned
with approaches of speaking
Richard Nordquist explains in his article in grammar.about.com the
evolution of definitions from the early times up to the modern era. Early
definitions have tended to see speech communities as bounded and localized
groups of people who live together and come to share the same linguistic norms
because they belong to the same local community.
Our last quotation, by Dwight Bollinger, identifies these groups
as speech communities, and stresses the unlimited amount of complexity that is
possible (Bolinger 1975:333):
"There is no limit to how human beings league themselves
together for self-identification, security, gain, amusement, worship, or any of
the other purposes that are held in common; consequently there is no limit to
the number and variety of speech communities that are to be found in the
society"
According to this view, any population(whether of a city, a
village, or a whole state) may be expected to contain a very large number of
speech communities indeed with overlapping memberships and overlapping language
systems.
After, taking the overview of all the above definitions presented
by various linguists I've concluded that Labov's definition leads to speech
community in a real sense because Labov's definition concentrates on shared
norms while other definitions emphasize the shared language or variety. The
emphasis on shared linguistic characteristics is evident in all the definitions
except Labov's. One may suggest that Labov's definition is more psychological
than linguistic in its orientation. This, however, is not to imply that other
definitions don't lead to real sense, but that Labov's offers more scope for
real sense.
Labov's theory of speech community rests on two premises:-
a) that reaction/attitude to linguistic variables are the same
throughout the community despite differences in the actual use of variables by
each group of speakers.
and
b) that various social groups in the society use the linguistic
variables (or language variety) in the same way, although not necessarily to
the same level.
Based on premise (a) Labov regards New York City as one speech
community because the subjective reactions to the linguistic variables such as
(r) reflect agreement among speakers even though each group of speakers uses
the variables differently. For example, he writes: (1972a:158).
"A speech community cannot be conceived as a group of
speakers
who all use the same forms; it is best defined as a group who
share
norms in regard to language."
At another point he writes:
"the linguistic variable became one of the norms which
defined the
speech community, and all the members of the speech community
reacted in a uniform manner to its use" (Ibid: 179).
Labov's concept of speech community abandons any notion of
uniformity in the actual employment of language or linguistic variables but
relies on a shared evaluation of linguistic variables.
Considering premise (b), Labov writes:
''that New York is a speech community and not a collection of
speakers living side by side, borrowing from each others'
dialects.
maybe demonstrated by many kinds of evidence. Native New
Yorkers differ in their usage in terms of absolute values of the
variable, but the shift between contrasting styles follow the same
the pattern in almost every case." (1966:7).
In other words, New Yorkers form a single speech community because
all
group exhibit an increase in the variant (r) as the level of
formality increases.
Labov's study in 1966 showed that every group exhibited a regular
style
shifting in the same direction.
This definition is more prestigious as compared to others. There
is uniformity in style-shifting behavior. Social distinction influence both the
production of speech and its evaluation by community members. Labov's work
developed techniques to draw out normal speech from people despite the
recorder. It developed methods for quantitative measurements of linguistic
data. The problem of heterogeneity of speech communities has been overcome
because we can correlate linguistic features with social class accurately.
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