Data and methods for groups of people

Created in November 05, 2023

2023   ·   linguistics

Originally a squib as part of the LING552 course by Didar Akar in the fall semester of 2023.

Three approaches to grouping people for research have been common in sociolinguistic research. They are, in order of occurrence in relevant sociolinguistic literature: speech community, social network, and community of practice. These concepts are leveraged to make sense of certain linguistic variations, each having their own advantages and disadvantages.

Speech community

A speech community (SpCom) is defined as a group of people that deem ways of speaking some way or another in agreement. For example, New York City residents agree on postvocalic /r/ being prestigious, even though many do not use it themselves. A SpCom generally has a geographic location and can be made up of any number of people. While a group, that shares a set of norms among themselves, can be regarded as a SpCom, a subset of it sharing their own norms can be one as well. In a broad context, Turkish speakers may be differentiated from Greek-speaking communities by “Turkish speech community;” in a more local context, Istanbulites may be grouped as the “Istanbul speech community;” etc. [1, p.67-68]

Methodologies, such as Rapid Anonymous Survey (RAS), using variational data of a supposed SpCom take it for granted that a community holds a shared set of norms. Thus, a two-step study becomes necessary where: one, first, should locate the community by learning about who shares norms; second, study the variation that is currently occurring, or will occur in a longitudinal study, only if the community does not disassemble or lose some members in the meantime. This goes against the further findings in the field that the communities are mostly dynamic and many of them overlap each other. One of the other criticisms of the concept SpCom is its special focus on norms, effectively disregarding outliers in a community.

Social network

A social network is defined per individual as all the relationships an individual has. Social networks of individuals overlap to create an intricate structure. Data needed to create and analyze a network should include individuals, relationships, with their kinds (e.g., parent—child), between them, and variations they produce. The method of analyzing these networks is commonly called Social Network Analysis (SNA) with various approaches employed. Recent technological developments allowed people that are far away from each other to be part of the same network and interact regularly. This type of data is much easier to obtain in large amounts for researchers, helping further the field. On the one hand, these networks are readily available for digital networks; on the other hand, there is the criticism of these networks being too flailed by network structure.

Community of practice

A community of practice (CofP), a relatively recent concept to sociolinguistics introduced by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), is defined as a group of people that develop practices, not necessarily linguistic, while sharing a common goal. This is more in line with the findings that language is intertwined with the social structure of a community and linguistic variation is only one type of practice in a community. The community need not share a geographic location.

While SpCom is criticized for its centrality and social networks are more focused on individuals and binary relationships, CofP is more balanced and qualitative. One of the improvements in studies utilizing the concept CofP is that the speakers have more active participation in the process, albeit more difficult on the researcher’s side. Eckert (2000) in her study of Belten High employs ethnographic work, based on interviews with individuals and groups. One advantage provided by ethnographic, detailed, work is that the researchers can hope to identify if a practice has emerged in the community as a practice or sprang up outside the community but recognizable within it [4, p.14], which seems not possible with the assumptions of a speech community.

References

  1. Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J. (2014). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (7th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
  2. Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992). Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21(1), 461-488.
  3. Eckert, P. (2000). Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High.
  4. King, B. (2019). Communities of Practice in Language Research: A Critical Introduction. Routledge.