National open university of nigeria school of arts and social sciences
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| 3.2 Speech community Speech community is a group of speakers who use language in a distinct way generally accepted among them. This group of speakers maybe located in the same area or situated indifferent locations. What is common to them is that they recognize a language or a dialect of a language as their standard means of communication. For instance, we can talk about a Yoruba speech community comprising of Yoruba speakers in the southwestern Nigeria and in other parts of the world, such as Benin Republic, parts of Brazil and USA. The speech community is the locus of most sociolinguistic and anthropological linguistic research. Earliest attempts to identify speech communities date back to the Prague School notion of sprechbond or speech bond, which refers to shared ways of speaking which goes beyond language boundaries They also talk about sprachbond 40 language bond, which involves relatedness at the level of linguistic forms Romaine, 1994: 23). Several scholars have defined of speech community indifferent ways. Below are some of the definitions. The speech community is defined by the participation in a set of shared norms…which maybe observed in behaviour and in the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation Labov (1972: 120 ff) A speech community is made up of individuals who regard themselves as speaking the same language Corder (1973: 53) any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage. Gumperz (1971: 101) A community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety. A necessary primary term. it postulates the basis of description as asocial, rather than a linguistic, entity" Hymes (1972: 54 ff). A speech community is a group of people who do not necessarily share the same language, but share a set of norms and rules for the use of language. The boundaries between speech communities are essentially social rather than linguistic. A speech community is not necessarily coextensive with a language community" Romaine (1994: 22). Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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