LIN256H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Speech Community, Free Variation, Fishmans
Document Summary
A speech community is a group of people who are in habitual contact with one another, who share a language variety and social conventions or sociolinguistic norms, about language use. The way we talk, the writing and reading we do, all happen in a broader social context; the results of decisions made by societies and those who govern them. A typical answer that you can expect when asked what sociolinguistics is, is that it"s the scientific study of the relationship(s) between language and society. Sociolinguistics can study how the language practices of one community differ from those of the next. We can study the relationship in a community between language use and social categories, like class and status, gender and sexuality and ethnicity. With sociolinguistics, it"s also possible to study how language can reveal social relationships and how we adapt our language to suit the situation and the audience.
