Speech and Language Community

Abstract

‘Language community’ and ‘speech community’ are constructs – only recently distinguished systematically – referring to a social aggregate from the perspective of its language(s). This article first traces two threads in the literature on ‘speech community,’ one that grounds community in linguistic homogeneity and another that envisions community as an organization of diversity. We then turn to more recent topics: ‘communities of practice’; social networks; imagined participants and publics; ontological distinctions between ‘language community’ and ‘speech community’; and debates about consensus-based and conflict-based social theories. Finally, we consider approaches that downplay community in favor of boundaries, relations, and wider social fields.