Speech Community (Network, Intersecting Communities, Repertoires)

A. SPEECH COMMUNITY

Speech Community is hard to define it because there is not a true definition of it.

A community is a group of people with a shared set of activities, practices, beliefs, and social structures, meanwhile a speech community is a group of people who share similar ideas, uses, and norms of language. The kind of group that sociolinguist attempt to study is called speech. 

B. INTERSECTING COMMUNITIES

Each person speaks their own "typical" way according to its place of origin or specific speech community. Rosen Claims that cities cannot be thought of as a linguistic patchwork maps, ghetto because: 

1. Languages and dialects have no simple geographical distribution and

2. Because interaction between them blurs whatever boundaries might be drawn.

Dialects and languages are beginning to influence each other, for example London is a community in some sences but not in others. Neither a single speech community even though it has 300 languages or more, its too big and fragmented. It is to difficult to relate of speech community directly to language or languages spoken.

The concept of SC is less useful than what is expected and we should be instead referring to group as any set of individuals united for a common end. A person can belong to many different groups at any given time depending on the particular ends in view. Ex: Laura is living in Gotemborg Sweden, married to a Swedish man, she and her husband speak mostly English and Swedish switching and mixing both from time to time, she had to learn Swedish with an intense course  in Sweden, she is an immigrant from Costa Rica, she has an accent, she doesn't speak Swedish that well, she uses Swedish in the hospital, as well as English switching from time to time and from one group to another.

Each member of a community has a repertoire of social identities that are each one in a given context is associated with a number of nonverbal and verbal forms of expression. There is not a clear way on how to define how individuals can classify themselves and speaker are creating and recreating social identities. So, it is impossible to predict the group or community he or she will consider itself to belong in a particular moment. This group will change according to situation.

C. NETWORKING AND REPERTOIRES

Intensity of various relationship frequency/interactions:

Dense network: People you know and interact also know and interact with one another.

Multiplex: Tied together in a network 

Strong social cohesion

Feelings of solidarity

Encouragement to identify with others

OPEN and CLOSED networks: Its linguistic effect is intimately related to the type of community (small town or large city, Southern or Northern)

Open Network: A network which provide open access to its users. Information is often new and of importance, a (serious) blogger and visitor of blog.

Closed Network: Mostly strong ties. Information that flows in those networks tends to be redundant and inefficient. Facebook,

Speech Repertoires

Verbal repertoire: The totality of linguistic forms employed in a socially significant interaction. (Vocabulary, grammar)

Speech Repertoire: Linguistic Varieties used by a speech community.

        It is important to remember that group is a relative concept with respect to speach community. Also that an individual belongs to various speech communities, at the same time, but he/she will identify with only one of them. there are many definitions for speech communities which are all different: too simple or to complex.

References Link:

https://prezi.com/3tq5ytlm60fg/speech-communities-intersecting-communities-networks-and/