Paper Task of Sociolinguistics Speech Communities

By:

Andri Irawan Rahman Rahardjo Nur Muhammad Sholeh

(1010231106) (0910231126) (1110231150)

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY JEMBER MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY 2013

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Paper Language is always changing. There is no place on earth where language has stayed the same from its creation. Paul Roberts talks about how a community of people can create a language but also change it without even realizing their doing it. A language can change so much over a generation that people from hundreds of years age who used to live in the same place wouldn't even recognize the modern language. This kind of change has been taking place all over the world and seems like it can never be stopped. Language is both an individual possession and a social possession. We would expect, therefore, that certain individuals would behave linguistically like other individuals: they might be said to speak the same language or the same dialect or the same variety, i.e., to employ the same code, and in that respect to be members of the same speech community, a term probably derived from the German Sprachgemeinschaft. Indeed, much work in sociolinguistics is based on the assumption that it is possible to use the concept of speech community without much difficulty. Hudson (1996, p. 29) rejects that view: our sociolinguistic world is not organized in terms of objective speech communities, even though we like to think subjectively in terms of communities or social types such as Londoner and American. This means that the search for a true definition of the speech community, or for the true boundaries around some speech community, is just a wild goose chase. We will indeed discover that just as it is difficult to define such terms as language, dialect, and variety, it is also difficult to define speech community, and for many of the same reasons. That difficulty, however, will not prevent us from using the term: the concept has proved to be invaluable in sociolinguistic work in spite of a certain fuzziness as to its precise characteristics. It remains so even if we decide that a speech community is no more than some kind of social group whose speech characteristics are of interest and can be described in a coherent manner.

We are also aware of the fact that people who live in the same region, but who differ in terms of education and economic status, often speak in quite differentways. Indeed, these differences may be used, implicitly or explicitly, as indications of membership in different social groups or speech communities.

1.2 Formulation of the Problem A. What is the Definition of Speech Communities? B. What is intersecting communities? C. What is are network and repertoires? 1.3 The Objective of the Problem 1. 2. 3. To know the Definition of Speech Communities. To know the intersecting communities. To know the network and repertoires are.

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
2.1 Speech Communities Sociolinguistics is the study of language use within or among groups of speakers. What are groups? Group is a difficult concept to dene but one we must try to grasp. A community is a group of people with a shared set of activities, practices, beliefs, and social structures. For our purposes, a group must have at least two members but there is really no upper limit to group membership. The kind of group that sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the speech community. Speech community must refer to a group. Social scientists have difficulty in defining group. Acording Yule (2006), A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. - Brown and Levinson o the weak concept of structure concrete terms isolable units of social structure o the stronger concept relative concept each group is a unit that is relevant only in relation to units of like size that for immediate purposes are contrasted with it. Speech community is not a language. Because a single speech community can employ more than one language and one language can be spoken in a wide variety of ways

Ideal Speech Community Based on Chomskys opinion about ideal speech community is completely homogeneous speech community. In this case, the Chomskys ideal speech communities doesnt exist a theoretical construct. Real Speech Community While Lyons said about the real speech community it is; all the people who use a given language (or dialect).

Speech communities are defined solely by their linguistic characteristics as the matter of fact, it is not enough. Speakers use linguistic characteristics to achieve group identity with other speakers. But they use other characteristics as well. For examples; social, cultural, political, ethnic Gumperz use linguistic community rather than speech community. He said 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. Here is Gumperzs other definition of 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 usage. Speech Community o members must share a set of grammatical rules o there must be regular relationships between language use and social structure o there must be norms which may vary by sub-group and social settings 2.2 Intersecting Communities People have some idea of how a typical person from each place speaks (e.g. New York speech, London speech, etc.) such cities cannot be thought of as linguistic patchwork maps both a geographical model and a social class model would be false. Are the communities static or fluid? Each residential community has its unique multilingual mix. Certain modern states insisted that language be used to express some concept of nationhood tried to standardize and promote a particular language. For the exception: Germany, UK, and USA. They had to acknowledge the presence of people who do not speak the standard variety but who are very much part of the larger communities Community/group = any set of individuals united for a common end, that end being quite distinct from ends pursued by other groups. A person may belong at one time to many different groups (e.g. at home, when shopping, working). Speech community becomes a very flexible concept as individuals can shift their identities quite freely. there is

no limit to the ways in which individuals can classify themselves. The choice depends on the situation

language bonding positive when the individuals share some features negative when the individuals lack some features

Each individual is a member of many different speech communities even the communities may or may not overlap. 2.3 Network and Repertoires Is how an individual relates to other individuals in society. Such in what networks he/she participates in? And on what occasions does individual A interact now with B, then with C? And how intensive are the various relationships multiplex network = one in which an individual is tied to others in a variety of ways o o e.g. through working together, playing together, through intermarriage it produces intense local relationships

uniplex network = one in which people are related to others in only a single way o o they may work together, or play together (but only one of these) it is likely that a person have access to several different uniplex networks o such networks are loose and diffuse

The concept of network is useful, because it focuses on the individuals relationship to society through the individual contacts that person has rather than on some kind of abstract group. No two individuals are exactly alike in their linguistic capabilities. Any individual has a Speech Repertoire. It is about he/she controls a number of varieties of a language or of two or more languages. A speech repertoire is the range of linguistic varieties which the speaker has at his disposal and which he may appropriately use as a member of his speech community Platt and Platt:

It is useful when applied to individuals rather than to groups. To describe the communicative competence of individual speakers. Each person has a distinctive speech repertoire. The Platts distinction speech repertoire = the repertoire of linguistic varieties utilized by a speech community which its speakers, as member of the community, may appropriately use verbal repertoire = the linguistic varieties which are at a particular speakers disposal Each individual has his/her own distinctive verbal repertoire + a speech repertoire in which that person participates. A speakers choice of a particular sound marks that speaker in some way.

CHAPTER III CLOSING 3.1 Conclusion A speech community is a group of people who share one or more varieties of language and the rules for using those varieties in everyday communication. Language is something that will always keep changing. Everyone seems to almost have their own form of language that they use. Also the type of environment that we are in can greatly influence how we act and speak. Roberts' article on how we as people grow in speech and language is quite interesting. It makes you wonder how people talked 500 years ago and why they talked the way they did. People should be allowed to speak the way they want and this constant change in language allows them to do this.

REFERENCES

Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. Yule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.