The Speech Community

The speech community (SpCom), a core concept in empirical linguistics, is at the intersection of many principal problems in sociolinguistic theory and method. This paper traces its history of development and divergence, surveys general problems with contemporary notions, and discusses links to key issues in investigating language variation and change. It neither offers a new and correct definition nor rejects the concept (both are seen as misguided efforts), nor does it exhaustively survey the applications in the field (an impossibly large task). The Speech Community General Problems with the Speech Community Every branch of linguistics that is concerned with representative samples of a population; that takes individual speakers or experimental subjects as typical members of a group; that studies langue as attributable to a socially coherent body (whether or not it professes interest in the social nature of that body); or that takes as primitive such notions as ‘native speaker’, ‘competence/performance’, ‘acceptability’, etc., which manifestly refer to collective behavior, rests partially on a concept equivalent to the SpCom. Linguistic systems are exercised by speakers, in social space: there they are acquired, change, are manipulated for expressive or communicative purposes, undergo attrition, etc. Whether linguists prefer to focus on speakers, varieties or grammars, the problem of relating a linguistic system to its speakers is not trivial. In studying language change and variation (geographical or social) it is inescapable, yet there is remarkably little agreement or theoretical discussion of the concept in sociolinguistics, though it is much defined. Some examples from research reports suggest the degree of its (over-)extension (Williams 1992, p.71). The term ‘SpCom’ has been used for geographically bounded urban communities large (Philadelphia; Labov 1989) and small (Anniston, Alabama; Feagin 1996); for urban neighborhoods (‘Veeton’ in Kingston, Jamaica; Patrick 1999) and subgroups: Belfast vernacular