Journal of Sociolinguistics 9/4, 2005: 582^589

DIALOGUE
Communities of practice in sociolinguistics

What is the role of power in

sociolinguistic variation?

Penelope Eckert E¤ tienne Wenger

Stanford University, California Learning for a small planet,
North San Juan, California

The Davies article (page 557 of this issue) has an important underlying
premise ^ that we need to understand the role of power generally in linguistic
practice, and specifically in variation and the spread of change. We agree with
this premise, and concur that communities of practice are a good locus for
studying how power is organized and exercised in day-to-day linguistic
practice. However, we are concerned that her approach might be misleading.
Davies argues that hierarchy and acceptance are a pair of concepts that are
missing from the framework. If by hierarchy she means any power structure
whatever form it takes, then it is already in the theory. A community of practice
by definition is such a power structure in a way that we will articulate shortly.
Calling it a hierarchy may draw attention to the centrality of power issues, but
it does not add anything conceptually. If as we suspect she means something
much more specific, a stratified structure that confers power according to
positions, then we believe that it is an oversimplification of the question of
power in communities of practice and that it should not be built into the theory.
We will argue that one has to be verycareful about what one builds into a theory.
Pairing two largely linear and uni-directional concepts such as hierarchy and
acceptance has several related connotations that we find problematic:
. the existence of a structure that confers power according to position
. the expectation that one can explain (and indeed predict) to whom the
structure confers power by articulating the nature of the structure itself
. an assumption of linear stratification with a well-defined top and bottom
. a suggestion that legitimacy is an issue for those at the bottom and that
those on top have free choice to accept or not those at the bottom.
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DIALOGUE 583

In the following comments, we consider these issues as they relate to

sociolinguistics, and particularly to the study of variation.
Davies is right to note that the concept of community of practice was born as
a construct in a theory of learning. But implying that the focus on learning
entails a lack of focus on power and legitimacy is a misreading. The issue of
legitimacy is central to the very construct of community of practice, which does
not separate learning and power in the way that she does by teasing apart
learning and acceptance. Thus when she says that one cannot gain legitimacy
purely through doing the right things, she is not pointing out a contradiction
in the theory, but assuming a structure of legitimacy disembodied from the
practice of a community. The question ‘I do all the practices, why aren’t I part
of the community?’ belies a confusion about the notion of practice with activity.
One doesn’t ‘do’ a practice excised from the community. A practice is a way of
doing things, as grounded in and shared by a community. The wearing of the
right color of lipstick for the sake of being accepted is a practice by virtue of its
role in getting accepted, not by virtue of its disembodied appropriateness.
Practice always involves the maintenance of the community ^ and therefore
its power structure. Legitimacy in any community of practice involves not just
having access to knowledge necessary for ‘getting it right’, but being at the
table at which‘what is right’ is continually negotiated.
What counts as competence1 and by whom is something that the community
negotiates over time; indeed, it is this negotiation that defines the community.
A community of practice can be defined as an ongoing collective negotiation of
a regime of competence, which is neither static nor fully explicit. In this sense,
the construct of community of practice ‘politicizes’ the concept of learning by
locating it in a social context where the experience of participation ^ and
therefore learning ^ is always a claim to competence. Indeed, Wenger (1998,
2000) proposes a social definition of learning as a realignment of competence
and experience, whichever shapes or reshapes the other. For a newcomer,
learning is largely a transformation of experience driven by the community’s
regime of competence. But just as often, learning involves the negotiation of a
member’s experience into the regime of competence, as when brokers introduce
novelty into a community.
Some communities of practice do reify elements of competence that define
membership. Sometimes, the criteria of competence can be defined so clearly
that it is possible to sort performance linearly as more or less competent, as it
is in sports for instance. But even when they exist, such explicit criteria of
competence are rarely the whole story in real-life communities because lived
practice is not merely instrumental; it includes the production of identities.
In this context, competence and the right to define what competence is cannot
be so easily teased apart. Some members gain legitimacy by redefining the
competence, not merely through compliance. And they do so by building an
identity in the community. This is a key point because the power structure of a
community of practice and its regime of competence are embodied in a
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collection of identities, not in a uniform structure. And the process of identity

construction leads speakers to construct their own styles ^ to find their own ways
of asserting their own places in group practice. So one would need to separate the
variables that are ‘compulsory’ (e.g. a jock girl does not use negative concord)
from those that are deployed to make meaning for oneself. Such deployments
would have to be accepted as legitimate within the community, but part of their
legitimacy would depend on their not being seen as imitation or simple
conformity.
Much of the focus recently in the study of variation has been on variables as
indirect indices (Silverstein 1976; Ochs 1991; Eckert 2000) ^ as linked to social
groups not directly, but via their association with stances, activities, and qualities.
Such variables, then, will be used as part of the construction of a persona
which, in turn, may be part of an individual’s negotiation of meaning in a
community of practice. The overwhelmingly most popular person in the jock
network studied in Eckert (1989, 2000) came from a working-class family, and
while she embraced many of the jock values, she prided herself in being stronger,
more genuine, more honest than many of her peers. She also prided herself in
not attending to issues of popularity or worrying about conforming (a common
part of a claim to legitimacy). In other words, she contested the terms of the
hierarchy. And while her vowels fell within the jock range, the nucleus of her
(ay) was more raised (more like a burnout’s) than most jock girls’. The sensitive
correlation of (ay) with social practice in this population (Eckert 1996) clearly
indicates that it is not a marker of origin (that is, it is not learned at home), but
is an index of stance. This girl’s use of (ay) was arguably part of a more general
show of pride that set her aside from the other jocks ^ that indeed showed her
entitlement. If others had picked up her way of speaking without the rest of her
persona, the gesture would have been meaningless. Her claim to competence
in the jock community, which uses her working-class experience, takes place in
the context of building an identity. She creates a niche of competence that gives
her legitimacy, and indeed prestige.Yet this does not necessarily delegitimize the
experience and identity of other jocks. So the regime of competence as embodied
in the identities of members does not evolve uniformly as an underlying
structure, but dynamically as a social system. This is one of a variety of reasons
why one does not find an alignment between place in the jock hierarchy and
the use of any of the linguistic variables examined in Eckert (2000). This is not
to say that one would never find such an alignment, as we will discuss later.
The pairing of hierarchy and acceptance reflects a set of assumptions about
cause and effect that leave behind the interleaving of experience, intersubjectivity,
and the mutual nature of social construction. The model offered in the Davies
paper is of linear hierarchies in which those at the top have legitimacy and
choice (e.g. whether or not to adopt an innovation), while those at the bottom
strive for appropriateness in order to be accepted. Those at the top determine
what is appropriate, and those who would enter or move in the hierarchy must
first discover, and then perform, appropriateness. But we have argued that
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competence is not static. And if a hierarchy is a pyramid of meaning-making

rights, then those at the top are obliged to assert their place at the top by
continually reaffirming their right to establish those terms.
This is not a simple detail but has serious consequences for linguistic practice.
The implication of Davies’ argument that hierarchy should be included is that
arrows in a network will point in one direction and that there will be some kind of
linguistic linearityassociated with it. Simple mentionings may point to hierarchy,
but exactly what kind of hierarchy, and the significance of that hierarchy for
linguistic influence, are not self-explanatory. Labov’s study (1972) of peer
groups in Harlem shows a clear relation between the use of certain AAVE
patterns and the degree of integration into, and recognition from the center of,
the Jets’ and T-birds’ networks. But Labov does not claim a link between this
structure and a particular social dynamic. He raises both access to peer speech
and identification with vernacular culture as possible factors. But he
emphasizes above all the conflicting discourses of vernacular and standard
culture, emphasizing that those who are not core members participate in
other (e.g. more standard speaking) communities as well, and he emphasizes
the heterogeneity of reasons for becoming a Lame. A focus on one community
of practice can lead the reader to view speakers’ identities purely in terms
of participation in that community. But, as Labov’s discussion clearly suggests,
identity is constructed in the negotiation of participation in multiple
communities of practice, and a community of practice approach would move
the investigator to pursue these links. Indeed, it is not clear to what extent the
cline of integration and the direction of the arrows in the T-birds’ and the Jets’
networks is a function of the core members’ refusal to accept the more
peripheral members, or of the peripheral members’ inability to service that
particular network because of obligations elsewhere. The important observa-
tion is that there can be a relation between one’s linguistic behavior and one’s
place in a social network, but the role and nature of hierarchy in that pattern
remains an open ^ and interesting ^ question.
The importance of the notion of community of practice to the study of the
jocks and the burnouts in Eckert (2000) was its potential for linking the global
patterns of class that have been dominating the study of variation to the
day-to-day practice that leads to linguistic differentiation. This lay, above all,
in the differential practices of jocks and burnouts with respect to institutions
and to the conurbation, and their own social relations. The jocks’embracing of
an integrated hierarchy, and their molding of their own hierarchy onto the
structure of the school institution contrasts with the burnouts’ egalitarian
ideology and their rejection of the school institution partly on the basis of its
hierarchical orientation. This ideological contrast is fundamental to being a
jock or being a burnout. And while it does not mean that there are no status
differences among burnouts, it does mean that jock and burnout power
structures are quite different. And these differences are significant in their
implications for linguistic variation and change.
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There’s a world of difference between talking about the most prestigious jocks
and the burned-out burnouts. The most prestigious jocks are at the top of a
consensual hierarchy constituted by jocks and recognized by most of the
in-betweens and acknowledged by others. Their institutional status, combined
with the institutional ideology of much of the student body, makes this a consen-
sual hierarchy and gives individuals power and status as a function of their posi-
tion in it. Jocks agree about the approximate position of everyone in that
hierarchy. In this case, then, power goes with popularity (we use popularity here
in the social network sense, as a function of the number of links pointing to that
person).The burned-out burnouts, on the other hand, do not represent the pinna-
cle of burnout-hood (nor do jocky jocks necessarily represent the pinnacle of
jockdom). They’re considered the extreme version, not perfection, of burnout
style, and other burnouts certainly do not look up to them. Certain burnouts may
be seen as cooler than others, some as tougher, some may be better liked, but there
is no integrated hierarchy (where everyone has a clear place) analogous to the jock
hierarchy. Thus while all communities of practice constitute a power structure,
the burnouts’ very strong egalitarian and anti-institutional ideology militates
against an integrated status hierarchy. The integrated hierarchy is one in which
people might indeed look upwards in an attempt to conform. The hierarchy based
on a particular quality, on the other hand, is one in which people are likely to look
for instantiations of indirect indexes to integrate into a style ^ how to do tough,
cool, whatever. To the extent that there are communities of practice in which
toughness is a central value (and this could be true of some burnout friendship
clusters), the person looking for a model of toughness will also be looking up
a status hierarchy. This is not true of the burnouts as a community of practice.
To some extent, all burnouts associate burnouthood with doing drugs, getting
in trouble, having problems, an anti-school stance, (in which egalitarianism
and loyalty are valued in contrast to the jock hierarchy), and an urban
working-class orientation. Different burnouts emphasize different aspects: the
burned-out burnouts emphasize drugs and getting in trouble, other burnouts
equate burnouthood with the problems that drugs and an anti-school stance
bring, but for them the emphasis is on trust, loyalty and egalitarianism. Still
others equate it with an anti-school stance and urban engagement and
know-how. Thus one burnout said of a member of a different burnout network
that he was not reallya burnout, but more like a‘rich junkie.’ These characteristics
constitute not so much linear hierarchies as elements of a repertoire for
constructing identities. For instance, trying too hard according to some
criteria often incurs a penalty and a loss of legitimacy.
We suspect that an underlying assumption of linearity in hierarchies also
underlies Davies’discussion of brokering.We believe that what is being sought is
a simple account of the spread of change from one community of practice to
another. The argument is that in order to bring innovation into a community of
practice, a person must simultaneously have some standing in that community
and access to sources of innovation. The problem is how Davies defines sufficient
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standing. Her equation of full membership with dense, multiplex links is

problematic, since density and multiplexity are characteristics of networks, not
of people. A person can be quite central to a community of practice that is also a
uniplex network.The terms early adopter and innovator (along with early majority,
late majority and laggards) simply specify where in the curve of adoption one lies.
The place of these people in the network, and their prestige and personality traits,
are matters of discussion ^ and certainly open issues in the study of linguistic
change. A broker, on the other hand, has a specific place in a network. Brokers
are people who span structural holes, mediating loose ties (Boissevain 1974;
Kadushin 2004). They provide reasonably strong links2 between otherwise
separate networks and thus are in a position to spread information or goods
between these networks. And people in this structural position can just as easily
fortify the separation of the networks by hoarding the resources. In order for a
person to be a broker, there must be a demand for resources across the structural
hole that they span, and they must actually deal in those resources.
The relevance of brokering to the spread of linguistic change is at least twofold.
Eckert (2000) and Labov (2000) (both in his discussion of Eckert’s unpublished
data (2000: 434) and of networks in Philadelphia), focus on brokers not simply as
purveyors of linguistic goods, but as personality types who are likely to have
heightened styles (indeed, who might find heightened styles to enhance their
abilities to broker). Brokering implies some kind of return, and it isn’t clear what
that return will be in the case of linguistic goods. If a girl spans a hole between the
jocks and a cluster of in-betweens, her ability to use that position to broker depends
on: (1)her access to valued jock commodities; (2) the desire for those commodities;
and (3) the possibility of some kind of return. If some group of in-betweens is
interested in information about, or social access to, the jocks, the broker’s ability to
deliver depends on the strength and nature of her connection with the jocks. And
her return is likely to be symbolic capital ^ the in-between group may see her as a
jock, and may be more likely to provide her with social support and, for example, a
constituency when needed (e.g. in a class or school election). If we want to think of
linguistic innovations as the goods that get brokered, they have to be goods that are
not freelyavailable.The kinds of variables discussed in Eckert (2000) do not qualify
in this way except perhaps an idiosyncratic use of one of them. New lexical items,
discourse markers, new pronunciations, on the other hand, could qualify.
At the crux of the matter is just how delicate an indication of social practice are
patterns of variation ^ particularly vowel changes in progress. The variables
examined in Eckert (2000) are no longer innovations ^ they have reached, in
social network theory terms, the ‘tipping point.’ They are resources that are
already available to everyone in the community, and the issue is whether and
how to use them. Thus the question in terms of hierarchy may be how much use
to make of each one, and perhaps even what constraints to exercise in their use.
But there is no evidence in the data that underlie Eckert (2000) that delicate
patterns of the use of the Northern Cities Shift or Negative Concord respond to
anything as simple as a hierarchy based on unidirectional namings in a network.
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Rather, as ‘publicly available’ resources, they may be used to position oneself

stylistically ^ within a hierarchy, but not necessarily in virtue of it. On the other
hand, localized linguistic resources, such as the Cobras’ use of skr- for str-, or the
core jets’ use of an’shi-it (Labov 1972: 281), may serve as fairly conscious markers
of membership, requiring more access ^ and indeed, their illegitimate use by a
marginal participant may attract censure.
We suspect that the reason Davies is proposing a more restrictive interpretation
of the concept of hierarchy is her complaint that the nature of power structures
among Jocks and Burnouts was derived through ethnography, not from the
communities of practice framework. The Davies article appears to expect social
networks and communities of practice to function as strong models ^ indeed,
almost as discovery procedures (Chomsky1957 has warned us of the consequences
of confusing theory with discovery procedures). The paper calls for a modification
of the construct community of practice on the basis of the author’s beliefs about how
linguistic change spreads. But the health of a construct depends on the quality and
the diversity of empirical studies done within it. There is always a delicate balance
in the construction of a model between the work that the model does and the work
that the model demands. While we agree, therefore, that we need fieldwork and
analysis focusing on precisely the issues discussed in this paper, we would not
want to prematurely build an analysis of how power works into the theory. The
suggestion that sociograms should be embedded within communities of practice
brings one perspective on power into central position and treats the construct as a
discovery procedure (as does Davies’ call for an explicit way of identifying
communities of practice, when it is precisely the problem of identifying the status
of practice in a social aggregate that enriches the research).
Introducing a construct into a theory requires care because whatever is built
into a theory can no longer be questioned. Issues of power and legitimacy are
built into the communities of practice theory, and therefore their importance
cannot be questioned.Whether this results in the kind of hierarchy that Davies
proposes is a question that the framework should expect ethnography to answer,
not one it should answer. It is something that needs explaining, not something
that can be used to explain. So we would rather pose the empirical questions
‘how does power work in and between communities of practice?’and ‘how does
power affect the spread of linguistic innovation?’And rather than confounding
power with hierarchy, we would ask the sub-question ‘when and how is power
and linguistic influence lodged in hierarchies?’

NOTES
1. Competence here refers to the ways community members demonstrate their
membership inside the community. All communities of practice define a regime of
competence.Whether this competence qualifies as ‘knowledge’ in the broader world
(and even in the eyes of members) is a more complex political question.

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2. We are confused by the claim that we ^ separately ^ specify that brokers must be
peripheral, but perhaps the problem is in the putting together of terms from very
different sources. Davies says that ‘[i]t is hard to imagine an outsider/peripheral
participant having sufficient status to ratify an innovation.’ But there is a big
difference between an outsider and a peripheral participant and between being a
broker and ratifying an innovation. The important thing is that maintaining
sufficiently strong ties across networks to be able to purvey goods is in tension with
servicing ties sufficiently to be a central part of a network.

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Address correspondence to:

Penelope Eckert
Department of Linguistics
Stanford University
Stanford
California 94305-2150
U.S.A.
eckert@stanford.edu

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