SPEECH COMMUNITIES

Socio-linguistics
Department Of English
 SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• The totality of messages we exchange with one

another while speaking a given language
constitutes a speech community…(Rossi-Landi
1973: 83)

• Speech community: a group of people who share

something about the way in which they use
language.

• Participation in a set of shared norms for the use

of language and for interpretation of linguistic
behaviour
Whenever in a community everybody knows
about the different uses of a particular
language , we can say that they belong to a
speech community.
 SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• A group of people steadily in communication with one

another, steadily hearing one another’s speech and
following the same conversation patterns/norms.

• “A speech community is made up of people who regard

themselves as speaking the same language; it need
have no other defining attribute” (Corder, 1973: 53).

• Keep in mind though, that this is an ideal simplicity.

Within speech communities, there may be other
smaller ones (based on different sociolinguistic
variables)
 SPEECH COMMUNITIES

• “an aggregate of people who come together

around mutual engagements in some common
endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking,
beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices
– emerge in the course of their joint activity
around that endeavor”. (Ekert and McConnell-
Ginet in Wardhaugh)
 What aspects may cause you to belong to a
particular speech community & not to other?

Age Region/Space
Social Class Family
Education Religion
Occupation/Hobbies Gender
Ethnicity/Race

These aspects are called “sociolinguistic

variables”
• Due to the aforementioned factors we are
responsible for dividing the same speech
community into different sub speech
communities.
• A person at the same time can belong to
different sub speech communities but under
one umbrella of main speech community and
for this he will have to stick to his own culture,
tradition, norms etc.
 Crux
• One society
• People speaking the same language
• Having one culture and tradition
• Have same values, beliefs and norms
• Language understood by everyone equally