Social and cultural factors which affect our use of language :

 Discourse communities.
 Speech communities.
 Social class.
 Social networks.
 Gendered identity.
 Ideology.
Definition
A discourse community is a group of people who share some kind of activity such as
members of a club who have regular meetings or a group of students who go to the
same university. (other examples?)
Members of a discourse community have particular ways of communicating with
each other.
They generally have the same goals, and they have shared values and beliefs.
A person is often a member of more than one discourse community.
The ways in which they communicate in each of these groups may vary, and the
values and beliefs that they share in each of these groups may vary.
Examples:
Swales (1990) provides a set of characteristics for identifying a group of people as
members of a particular discourse community.
 The group must have some set of shared common goals, some mechanisms for
communication, and some way of providing the exchange of information. These
goals may formally be agreed on or maybe tacit.
 The community must have its own genre, its own set of specialized terminology
and vocabulary, and a high level of expertise in its particular area
 The ways in which people communicate with each other and exchange
information will vary according to the group (meetings, newsletters, casual
conversation)
 There is a level of expertise in the use of the genres the discourse community
uses.
Cameron’s (2000) study of a call center in the UK.
She found that telephone operators were trained to communicate with customers in
certain ways:
 They were trained to answer the phone with a smile in their voice, and they were asked
to pay attention to the pitch of their voice so they conveyed a sense of confidence in
what they said.
 They were required to talk neither too loudly nor too quietly.
 They were trained not to drag out what they wanted to say, nor to speed through it.
 Telephone operators have similar goals; they are providing a service.
 They have their own call service genre, and their own terminology with the
product/service they are dealing with. There’s also a level of expertise with successful
call center workers.
 Discourse communities may consist of close-knit networks of members or loose-
knit networks.

 Discourse communities may be made up of overlapping groups of people. A

person maybe a student at CLT, a member of the Toastmasters club, and a
volunteer at SANAD.

 A person may have to operate in a number of roles in the same discourse

community. A PhD student and lecturer
Discourse communities also interact with wider speech communities.

 Example: The academic discourse community also interacts with the

wider speech community of the town or city in which the academic
institution is located. CLT community interacts with residents of
Riyadh.

 It is for these reasons that some people prefer the term communities
of practice to the term ’discourse community’
Devitt (2004) proposes three types of groups of language users: communities,
collectives, and networks.
 Communities are groups of people who a lot of time together in common
endeavors (people who work in the same office)
 Collectives are groups of people that form around a single interest, without the
frequency or intensity of contact of a community (book club)
 Networks are groups of people that are not as tightly knit as speech communities
with connections being made by one person who knows another person, who
knows another person.
 Speakers, often, have a repertoire of social identities and discourse community
memberships.

 Linguistic repertoire: a number of languages or language varieties that speakers

use to interact in their communities.
 The choice of language/language variety may be determined by the domain the
language is being used (family, friends, religious setting…)
 Social factors also determines language choice. Who we are talking to, the social
context, social distance between speakers, the topic, the relationship between
participants, the formality of the setting or type of interaction and the status of each
of the speakers.
 Example
 A speaker or writer can be the speaker of a particular language variety but uses it
to talk to communicate with a wider speech community than just his own.
 Example
 There is a relationship between language and gender.

 Gender is a social category – a socially constructed category.

 The deficit model
 Lackoff (1975) – women’s language, a use of language that is
different than men’s language.
 Men’s language = neutral language
Features of women’s language (Examples?)
- The use of overly polite forms
- The use of question tags
- Rising intonation in declaratives
- The avoidance of expletives
- A greater use in diminutives and euphemisms
- The use of more hedges and mitigating devices
- The use of particular vocabulary items(cute, sweet, charming) versus cool, great, terrific
“neutral”
- The effect of women’s language tends to be tentative, demeaning.
Views of women’s language:

1. Dominance approach: This approach views the difference in language use as a

result of male domination. That women’s language is a way to keep women in a
subordinate position.
 Lakoff 1975: found that women use more overt polite forms, hedges, indirectness…
Thus, less linguistic power.
2. Difference Approach: This approach argues that girls and boys live in different
subcultures, and as a result they grow up learning different ways of using language.
 In a critique of both the dominance and difference approaches, Cameron (1998)
argues that the expression of gender is always context-specific.

 Cameron (1998) argues that the view of gender and power are context-specific.
She argues that we need to take into account who the person is speaking to, from
what position and for what purpose.

 We need to view gender by looking at how people in particular social and cultural
interactions do gender in their use of language.
Simone de Beauvoir famously said “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman.”
 Performativity is based on the view that in saying something, we do, or ‘become’
it.
 A person learns to do, and in turn display being a woman in a particular social
setting, of a particular social class.
 Mostly, this is done unconsciously as we repeat acts such as gestures, movement,
and use of language that signify a particular identity (females imitate other
females)
 These acts are not natural; they are acquired through interactions with other
people.
 Example of men using language to do gender on page 34
 Speed, loud talk, and shouting were ways in which men showed their masculinity
and reflected that power and aggressiveness are highly valued traits.
 Terms such as “lads”, “fellas”, and “mates” show group membership and establish
solidarity between the players.
 A person will have multiple identities (personae) some more important/salient
than others (a mother- office worker- student … etc.) .
 Identity is not natural. It is constructed through discourse.
 Identity is not fixed. It is constantly constructed and reconstructed as people
interact with each other.
 Identity is a two way construction.
 Variationist perspective – social variables (what you use in pronunciation and in
non- standard grammar shows a lot about you).
 Poststrucural perspective – identity is something in constant process. One builds
his image according to the situation, context and purpose.
 Place defines people in both their eyes and the eyes or others.
 Identity and online environments.
Identity and
casual conversation – People do not engage in conversations just to waste time, but
rather to negotiate social identities as well as interpersonal relations.
 Because casual conversations are relaxed and spontaneous, people express their
identity in a more relaxed way. People build solidarity between each other by
showing their similarities and explore their differences.
1. It is influenced by the relationship between the people speaking.
2. The frequency which they come into contact with each other.
3. The degree of involvement they have with each other.
4. The sense of affiliation for each other.
Hyland:
-We are always told that writing is faceless- do not make it personal, do not use
personal pronouns… BUT he argues that everything we write says something about
us and the relationship we want with the readers.
- Some L2 writers find it difficult to hide their persona\ identity, this is because they
are not used to that in their L1.
- The instructor needs to know the background of his students to know how to make
their writing more acceptable (what they need to give up\ whether they are willing
to give it up). (page 44)
 Texts are never ideology free nor objective.
 Exploring ideology

Key concepts:
 Presupposition: relating the text to other texts
 Framing: how the context of a text is presented. ( the angle that the writer is using)
 Foregrounding: what concepts and issues are emphasized.
 Backgrounding: concepts and issues that are played down.