Colloquialism and the Community of Practice

Abstract

Colloquial language is a very comprehensive linguistic notion that beholds all the forms and linguistic units of informal language variations. The investigation of colloquial language requires precise data; and this can be fulfilled by the consideration of community of practice in the process of data collection. Community of practice is the mutual engagement of a group of people that share a certain interest, a social status, or an occupation in common; however, they are not supposed to be homogenous in age, gender, hobby, social status and occupation in order to be included. This study adopts a descriptive qualitative method to demonstrate, theoretically, how significant the availability of community of practice in colloquial language studies is. It ultimately aims at identifying the characteristics and morphological forms of colloquial language on the one hand, and expounding the notion and the criteria of community of practice and its contribution in conducting colloquial language studies on the other hand. This study hypothesizes that consideration of community of practice is a prerequisite in conducting colloquial language studies. This study concludes that the majority of the studies conducted on various colloquial language forms either ignored the consideration of community of practice or they were not fully familiar with the notion, the traits, the dimensions, the frame, the structure and the functions of community of practice.