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groups. While we may be able to talk about a speech community of speakers of North American English, we can also identify smaller groups with their own norms for interaction related to specific regions, religious organizations, occupational groups, etc. within this larger speech community.

      It is also possible for language users to share certain norms for language when they do not share linguistic systems. For example, in Central Europe many speakers of Czech, Austrian German, and Hungarian share rules about the proper forms of greetings, suitable topics for conversation, and how to pursue these, but no common language. They are united in a Sprachbund (‘speech area’), not quite a speech community, but still a community defined in some way by speech (Kurzová 2019). As we can see, then, trying to define the concept of speech community requires us to come to grips with definitions of other concepts, principally group, language (or variety), and norm.

      A single speech community also need not contain only a single language or single variety. Gumperz (1971, 101) points out that ‘there are no a priori grounds which force us to define speech communities so that all members speak the same language.’ As we will see in chapter 8, many societies exist in which bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm, and the use of multilingual discourse may be part of the speech community norms. It is such considerations as these that lead Gumperz to use the term linguistic community rather than speech community. He proceeds to define that term as follows:

      a social group which may be either monolingual or multilingual, held together by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weaknesses in the lines of communication. Linguistic communities may consist of small groups bound together by face‐to‐face contact or may cover large regions, depending on the level of abstraction we wish to achieve. (Gumperz 1971, 101)

This brings out another aspect of our definition of speech communities: they are defined partly through their relationships with other communities. Internally, a community must have a certain social cohesiveness; externally, its members must find themselves cut off from other communities in certain ways. The factors that bring about cohesion and differentiation will vary considerably from occasion to occasion. You are a member of one speech community by virtue of the fact that on a particular occasion you identify with speakers of European French rather than Quebecois French; in another context you may distinguish between Parisian norms and those from the south of France. Thus, it is context and contrast that help us decide what level of speech community is relevant. This approach would suggest that there is a French speech community (because there are English and German ones), a Parisian speech community (because there are London and Bostonian ones), but also speech communities within the greater metropolitan area of Paris – we will return to this example below when we discuss language attitudes.

      These examples based on geography bring up another aspect of speech communities – with increased media interaction, there are many communities comprised of people who are not in geographical proximity within online communities, WhatsApp groups, Twitter followers, etc. (Milburn 2015). This, then, raises the issue of practices and how they are part of community. Jacquemet (2019) argues that speech communities must be redefined to not only include multiple codes but also digital ways of communicating; while previous assumptions about the indexicality of codes need to be re‐examined, a sense of belonging is a salient aspect of group membership. In the following sections, we will explore other ways of defining groups that take these ideas into account.

Communities of Practice

      As indicated above, one possible definition of a speech community is simply a group of people who interact regularly. Such groups and communities themselves are ever changing, their boundaries are often porous, and internal relationships shift. They must constantly reinvent and recreate themselves. Today’s middle class, youth, New Yorkers, women, immigrants, and so on, are not yesterday’s nor will they be tomorrow’s. The group chosen to identify with will also change according to situation: at one moment religion may be important; at another, regional origin; and at still another, perhaps membership in a particular profession or social class. An individual may also attempt to bond with others because all possess a set of characteristics, or even just a single characteristic (e.g., be of the same gender), or even because all lack a certain characteristic (e.g., are not categorized as ‘White’). Language bonding appears to be no different. In one case, command of a particular language may be a potent marker and, therefore, help create a sense of community and solidarity with others (e.g., a group of Italian speakers abroad); in another case, where you speak a variety associated with Sardinia or Sicily may divide these same speakers. However, even sharing the same dialect might be of no significance: if the circumstances require you to discuss astrophysics, your knowledge of the terms and concepts of astrophysics may be more important than the regional or social dialect you speak. Alternatively, speakers of Yoruba may find themselves forming a community with speakers of Japanese and Arabic within an English‐speaking foreign‐student speech community at a North American or European university.

One way sociolinguists try to get at this dynamic view of social groups is with the idea that speakers participate in various communities of practice. Eckert and McConnell‐Ginet (1998, 490) define a community of practice as ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagements in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of their joint activity around that endeavor.’ A community of practice is at the same time its members and what its members are doing to make them a community: a group of workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent friendship group, a women’s fitness class, a Kindergarten classroom, and so on. They add (1998, 490): ‘Rather than seeing the individual as some disconnected entity floating around in social space, or as a location in a network, or as a member of a particular group or set of groups, or as a bundle of social characteristics, we need to focus on communities of practice.’ (See Meyerhoff and Strycharz 2013 for additional details.) It is such communities of practice that shape individuals, provide them with their identities, and often circumscribe what they can do. Eckert (1988, 2000) used this concept in her research in a Detroit‐area high school and Mendoza‐Denton (2008) also used it in her work with groups of Latina girls in California. These variationist sociolinguistic studies will be discussed in more detail in chapter 5.

      One study which makes use of the community of practice construct for the study of language and identities is Bucholtz (1999), an investigation of the language of ‘nerd girls’ in a US high school. Bucholtz notes the following ways in which the concept of speech community is inadequate for research on language gender:

      1 Its tendency to take language as central.

      2 Its emphasis on consensus as the organizing principle of community.

      3 Its preference for studying central members of the community over those at the margins.

      4 Its focus on the group at the expense of individuals.

      5 Its view of identity as a set of static categories.

      6 Its valorization of researchers’ interpretations over participants’ own understandings of their practices. (1999, 207)

      Bucholtz argues that within the community of practice framework, we can define a social group by all social practices, not just language. This concept can also incorporate the idea that there may be conflict within a group about these practices and norms, and thus marginal members of communities, as individuals, can be better included in the analysis. Further, as we will discuss below, this does not put speakers into pre‐existing identity categories, but focuses instead on their own construction of identity. Finally, through ethnographic research, it allows for the analysis to focus on how the speakers themselves, not the researcher, enact group memberships.

      In this study on nerd girls, Bucholtz notes how the girls both conform to the larger social order (i.e., by focusing on academic achievement) and also resist it (i.e., by rejecting traditional ideas of femininity in dress and appearance). The values of the members of this

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