Talk:Speech community

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[edit] My edit

I've mostly done cleanup on this article. I removed the "wikipedia as a speech community" section entirely, as it violates Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, and I frankly think it looks very unprofessional. I've moved and expanded one of the sentences that was formerly in that section to the end of the lead section, and replaced the other mention of wikipedia by a link to internet forum. I also copyedited parts of the article. Graham talk 10:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned that this article confuses the notion of speech community with community of practice. I think it needs a good overhaul. 71.134.237.139 09:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusion + hasty generalizations

I agree that this article confuses several constructs in sociolinguistics.

However, I'm somewhat troubled by the oversimplification under the "Definition" heading. The existence of a certain social demographic group does not require that members of such group have 1. distinct and exclusive speech patterns of their own and 2. that they use or choose to use such speech patterns. In fact, I find the poor example of belonging to more than one speech community to be a product of stereotyping (over-generalizing) more than anything else. Furthermore, the addition of "likely" is proof of conjecture. The passage reads as follows:

"For example, a gay Jewish waiter would likely speak and be spoken to differently when interacting with gay peers, Jewish peers, or his co-workers. If he found himself in a situation with a variety of in-group and/or out-group peers, he would likely modify his speech to appeal to speakers of all the speech communities represented at that moment."

I think the notions of face (Goffman), topic, and speech convergence would be more relevant here. -- CJ Withers (talk) 20:42, 16 November 2007 (UTC)