Presentators: Gabriela, Tatiana, Sascha Mei-6 Sociolinguistics

Language is both an individual possession and social possession. Speech community is hard to define it because there is not a true definition of it. The kind of group that sociolinguists attempt to study is called Speech Community.

Sociolinguistics: it is the study of language used within or among of speakers. Group: It must have at least 2 members

There are different purposes that they get together. 1. Social 2. Religious 3. Political 4. Cultural Stereotype: to draw conclusions about people on the basis of what we observe.

 Group differentiation from, other speakers. Examples: social, cultural, ethnic. Communities are defined with the relationship with other communities.

 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 patchwork maps, ghetto after ghetto because: 1. languages and dialects have no simple geographical distribution and 2. because interaction between them blurs whatever boundaries might be drawn .

 Dialects and languages are beginning to influence each other. London community in some sences but not in others. Neither a single speech community even though it has 300 languages or more . it{s too big and fragmented . It is to difficult to relate the concept of speech community directly to language or languages spoken. Each residential community has its unique multilingual mix and no language equates in distribution to a specific residential community.

The concept of SC is less useful than what is expected and we should be instead referring to group as any set of individuals united for a common end. A person can belong to many different groups at any given time depending on the particular ends in view. The book gives an illustration to this approach, Ill explain it with the case of my sister. Laura is a tica living in Gotemborg Sweden . married to a Swedish man she and Per speak mostly English and Swedish switching and mixing both from time to time. My sister had to learn Swedish with an intense course in Sweden. She is an inmigrant from Costa Rica. I guess she has an accent, she doesnt speak Swedish that well. She uses Swedish in the hospital, as well as English switching from time to time and from one group to another.

 Each member of a community has a repertoire of social identities that are each one in a given context is associated with a number of nonverbal and verbal forms of expression. Speakers participate in various communities of practice an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagements in some common endeavor. It is also its members and what they are doing to make them a community. Ex workers in a factory, extended family, a classroom. There is not a clear way on how to define how individuals can classify themselves and speakers are creating and recreating social identities. So, it is impossible to predict the group or community he or she will consider itself to belong in a particular moment. This group will change according to situation .

Each individual is a member of many different groups. People get interested to be identified with one groups members today and with others the next. They may or not overlap. One of the consequences is linguistic variation: people dont speak alike. Neither in the same way on every occasion. People have a need to be seen as the same as certain other people on some occasions and as different from them on others.

 Intensity of various relationships frequency/interactions Dense network: people you know and interact with also know and interact with one another Multiplex: tied together in a network
a. Strong social cohesion b. Feelings of solidarity c. Encouragement to identify with others

 Much linguistic behavior seems explicable in terms of network structure.

(Important within the network structure: you will feel the need to give opinions and communicate ideas.)

Linguistic choices and social bonding: particular sound, words or expressions OPEN and CLOSED networks Its linguistic effect is intimately related to the type of community (small town or large city, Southern
or Northern)

 open network: A network which provides open access to its users. Information is often new and of importance, a (serious) blogger and visitors of blog. closed network: mostly strong ties. Information that flows in those networks tends to be redundant and inefficient. Facebook.

Verbal repertoire

The totality of linguistic forms employed in a socially significant interaction. (vocabulary, grammar)

Speech repertoire

Linguistic varieties used by a speech community

 It is important to remember that group is a relative concept with respect to speech community. Also that an individual belongs to various speech communities, at the same time, but he/she will identify with only one of them. There are many definitions for speech community which are all different: too simple or to complex.

Thank you!