Sociolinguistic and

English Language
Teaching
Paper Assignment entitled “Speech Community”

By:
Mega Fitri Wulandari
Joko Prayuda
Try Randi Syafutra

Lecturer:
Dr. Alamsyah Harahap, Dip.TESL., M.Lib

GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

UNIVERSITAS BENGKULU
2018
Preface

Thank to Almighty God who has given his bless to the writers for

finishing the English paper assignment entitled “Speech Community”. And we

would like to say thank you to Mr. Dr. Alamsyah Harahap, Dip.TESL., M.Lib as
the lecturer that always guided us and give much knowledge about

Sociolinguistic.

This assignment is the one of Sociolinguistic Task that composed of

Speech Community. We realized this assignment is not perfect but we hope it can

be useful for us. Critics and suggestions are needed to make this assignment be

better.

Hopefully we as college students in Graduate Program of English

Education” can get more understanding in sociolinguistic especially about Speech

Community.

CHAPTERS 1

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of The Study

 Language is using by the people individually and for social. People

use language for communicate with other that have dialect, variation and

respect each other is called Speech Community. The term derived from

German Sprachgemeinschaf. Hudson (. 1996, page 29) refused a view stated

that: ‘our sociolinguistic world is not organized in terms of objective “speech

communities”. It is mean that the search for “true” definition of speech

community is hard.

A speech community comes to share a specific set of norms for

language use through living and interacting together, and speech

communities may therefore emerge among all groups that interact frequently

and share certain norms and ideologies. Such groups can be villages,

countries, political or professional communities, communities with shared

interests, hobbies, or lifestyles, or even just groups of friends. Speech

communities may share both particular sets of vocabulary and grammatical

conventions, as well as speech styles and genres, and also norms for how and

when to speak in particular ways.

B. Purpose of The Paper

The aims of this paper are:

1. To explain clearly the definition about Speech Community, Intersecting

Communities and Network and Repertoire.

 2. To give the example of Speech Community, Intersecting Communities

and Network and Repertoire.

CHAPTER 2

DISCUSSION

A. Speech Community

Sociolinguistics is the study of the language used between groups

or speakers. The group consists of two members but that is not become the

highest limit for membership of the group. The community can form a group

because of these reasons: social, religion, politics, culture, family, work,

hobbies, etc. The group can be temporary and member can change according

to the purpose of the group. Group arrangement is important because in a

group consist of different individual feelings such as strong or weak feeling,

committing or refusing, and finding success or failure in the group.

For the conclusions when someone di a research about groups, the

thing we have to pay attention is the group consists of individuals who have

complex identities because they have their own habits / attitudes that offer

stereotypes and it can surprise us in many ways The types of groups that are

tried for research are called speech communities for purely purposes. Some

linguists have concluded the existence of "ideal" speech communities.

1. The Definition of Speech Community

Speech community was defined by some experts, they are:

 Lyons (1970, p. 326) defined speech community as 'real' speech

societies, it means 'All people who use a particular language (or dialect).

In addition, if speech communities are defined solely by their linguistic

characteristics, we must recognize from each of these definitions that

language itself is a communal possession. And we must also acknowledge

that using linguistic characteristics alone to determine what is or is not in

a speech community has proved so far to be quite impossible because

people do not feel any direct relationship between the linguistic

characteristics of A, B, C, and so on, and the speech community X. The

speaker uses linguistic characteristics to achieve the group identify with,

and group differentiation from , other speakers, but they use other

characteristics as well: social, cultural, political and ethnic, referring to

what are called speech markers by Giles, Scherer, and Taylor (1979, p.

351).

Labov's definition of speech society (1972b, pp. 120-1) and Milroy

(1987a, p. 13) has indicated some of the consequences of speech 'society

is a very abstract concept, one possibility not exclusively linguistic in

nature, and even linguistic norms themselves may vary.

Gumperz (p.101) point out that ‘there are no a priori grounds

which force us to define speech communities so that all members speak

the same language.’ Communities are defined in part through their

relationships with other communities. Internally, the community has

social cohesiveness and externally, its members must find themselves cut

off from other communities in certain ways. Factors that bring cohesion
and differentiation will vary considerably from occasion to o occasion.

Individuals will shift the sense of society as a different factor. Such is the

definition from Bloomfield (1933, p. 42) the speech community is a

group of people who interact by means of speech.’ Gumperz (1971, p.

114) gives another definition of speech community that is not only

members of the speech community arrange a set of grammar rules, but

also there must be an orderly relationship between the use of language

and social structures there must be norms that may differ from sub- group

and social settings.

Hymes (1974, p. 47) disagrees with the opinion of these experts,

He claims that these simply reduce the notion of speech communities to

those of language and in effect, throw out ‘speech community as a

worthwhile concept. He points out that it is impossible to equate language

and speech community when we do not have a clear understanding of the

nature of language. He insist that speech communities cannot be defined

solely through the use of linguistic criteria. The way, in which people see

the language they speak is also important, that is, how they evaluate

accents; how they determine the fact that they speak in one language

more favored than others; and how they determine language boundaries.

In addition, the rules for using language may be as important as feelings

about the language itself.

It can be concluded that the concept or definition of the speech

community is difficult to explain. However, based on the opinions of the

experts above regarding the definition of a speech community can be

 concluded that the speech community is a group of people who not only

interact in relation to language, but about how people see the language

they use is also important, namely how their accent, how they determine

the fact that they use one language more often than other languages, and

how they determine language boundaries.

Examples of speech communities are "Black English" or "African-

American Vernacular English (AAVE) created by black people in the

United States. Blacks (Afro-Americans) experienced long suffering when

America still embraced a system of discrimination against to black people

in all fields. To do this resistance, they created something unique of their

own creation to show the existence of a black community that was often

discriminated against by white people in America. One of the distinctive

cultures of Afro-American people in the form of language is "Black

English". The language "Black English" is very contrary to the general

English standard in terms of vocab and grammar. "Black English" is

mostly contained in typical Afro-American art works, rap music. White

people just arbitrarily consider that "Black English" created by Afro-

American people as low-class English language that filled with impolite

vocab and grammar.

2. Intersecting Communities

The fact that people do use expressions such as New York speech,

London Speech and South African Speech indicates that they have some

idea of how a typical’ person from each place speaks, that is of what it is

like to be a member of a particular speech community somewhat loosely

defined. Rosen (1980, pp.56-57) has also indicated some of the problems

you find in trying to call a city like London a speech community and in

describing exactly what characterizes its speech. He says that such cities

cannot be thought of as linguistic patchwork maps, ghetto after ghetto, not

onlly because languages and dialects have no simpe geographical

distribution but also because interaction between them blurs whatever

boundaries might be drawn. Both a geographical model and a social class

model would be false, thought each could contribute to an understanding.

The concept of speech community is less useful than it might be

and we should return to the concept of group as any set of individuals

united for a common end, that end being quite distinct from ends pursued

by other groups. Consequently, a person may belong at any one time to

many different groups depending on the particular ends in view. Example :

at home a person may live in a billingual setting and switch easily back

and forth between two languages. She let this be a female person-may

shop in one of the languages but work in the other. Her accent in one of

the languages may indicate that she can be classified as an immigrant to

the society in which she lives, an immigrant, moreover, form a specific

country. Her accent in the other language shows her to be a native of

region Y in country Z. Outside country Z, however as she now is, she

regards herself as speaking not a Y variety of Z but as speaking Z itself.

She may also have had extensive technical training in her new country and

in her second language and be quite unable to use her first language in
work related to this speciality. In the course of the day, she will switch her

identification from one group to another.

Saville-Troike (1996, p. 357) places even more importance on the

need for individuals to identify themselves with various others but her

views are essentially the same as those of Bolinger :’Individuals may

belong to several speech communiities, just as they may participate in a

variety of social settings. Which one or ones individuals orient themselves

to at any given moment-which set of social and communicative rules they

use is part of strategy of communication. To understand this phenomenon,

one must recognize that each member of community has a repetoire of

social identities and that each identity in a given context is associated with

a number of appropriate verbal and non-verbal forms of expression.

People do use expression indicates that they have some idea of

how a typical person from each place speaks ( to be a member of a

particular speech community somewhat loosely defined. Ex : New York

speech, London speech, South African speech.

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

patcwork maps, ghetto after ghetto because :

1. Languages and dialect have no simple geographical distribution.

2. Because interaction between them blurs whatever boundaries might be

drawn.
3. Network and Repertoire

Network is a step to knowing how individuals interact intensely

or not with other individuals. It means, how on what occasion does

individual A interact with individual B, then with C, and return with D?

how often are various relationships: does A interact more often with B

than with C or D? how broad is the relationship between A and B how

many individuals interact with A and B in any activity that makes them

together in some situation?

In network system, there are three types:

- A dense network:

if the people you know and interact with also know and interact with one

another.

- A loose network :

if the people do not do the network connection with other

- A multiplex network:

f the people within it are tied together in more than one way, i.e., not just

through work but also through other social activities.

Then, the dual network is where the path of one individual to another

passes through many steps such as working together, playing together,

and making it possible through mixed marriages’ while a single network

is only intertwined through one step such as they can work or play

together, blend together. The environment around someone has been

connected to several a single, different network, relationships with

relatives, colleagues in free time do not collide, as long as they are

different people. Sometimes this network looks weak and mixed. Milroy

(1980a) involves himself in research on linguistic variation as part of a

network system. He states that additional advantages and that concepts

from networks are very useful because they can focus on relationships

that individuals have rather than some kind of abstract and character

group the statistics itself.

In the communities, no two individuals have similarities in their

linguistic abilities. The community is separated from one to another by

gradations of social class, regional origin, and work; by factors of

religion, gender, nationality and ethnicity; by psychological differences

such as special types of linguistic abilities; and by personal

characteristics. Each individual has a speech repertoire so that the

individual regulates the number of languages or two or more languages.

Repertoire is that he or she control a number of varieties of

language or two or more language. Platt (1975, p. 35) assumes that

speech repertoire is a variety of linguistic varieties in which the speaker

has its share and is used correctly as a member of the speech community.

Since Platts found that both the repertoire of speech communities and

individual repertoires speak worthy in sociolinguistic considerations.

The concepts of repertoire speech itself will be more important if it

applied to individuals than to the groups. The communities can use it to

describe the communicative competencies of individual speakers.

Everyone also will have a distinctive repertoire in his speech.

The speech repertoire is the ability of a person or individual to master a

variety of languages. In the communities, focusing on the repertoires of

individuals and specifically on the precise linguistic choices they make

in well-defined circumstances does seem to offer us some hope of

explaining how people use linguistic choices to bond themselves to

others in very subtle ways. A speaker’s choice of a particular sound,

word, or expression marks that speaker in some way. It can say ‘I am

like you’ or ‘I am not like you.’ When the speaker also has some kind of

range within which to choose, and that choice itself helps to define the

occasion, then many different outcomes are possible.