Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society. At the same time, it also refers to how language is used in different speech communities. So, sociolinguistics is all about society and language which are interdependent. We need at least a language to communicate and to survive in our society. But the way of using a language varies and changes in communities. We use a language in different ways in our different speech communities. So, sociolinguistic variation is a natural phenomenon which mostly depends on different social factors such as social class, social status, religion, gender, ethnicity, age etc. From the study of sociolinguistics, it is easy to understand why people speak differently in different social contexts and how social factors affect language varieties (e.g. dialects, registers, genres, etc.). However, sociolinguistic variation is a term which is interconnected with many other terms, but the main focus of this paper is on speech communities. 

In sociolinguistics, the concept of a group is really difficult to define but the sociolinguists have attempted to explain the concept of a group which is called a speech community (Patrick, 2002). Still, there are no proper definitions for speech communities in society. In general, the group of people who share particular linguistic norms and behaviour are considered to be a speech community. But this is not that simple because we have a multilingual society as well where people refer to different languages for several purposes at a time. Hence, sociolinguists have focused on the language practice of a group of people who share a different repertoire of languages or varieties (Zhan, 2013). Many sociolinguists have given different views on this term of a speech community. Lyons (1970) defines what he calls a ‘real speech community’ referring to a group of people who use a given language or dialect. But it is really easy to understand that a speech community is not borderline with a language. Though the Bangla language is spoken all over Bangladesh and some places of the world, we can easily recognize that it is spoken in many ways, such as Bangladeshi people speaking in a way that is different from the people of West Bengal, India. Moreover, if we consider national boundaries to define the speech community, it is seen that many recognizable single-speech communities use more than one language for everyday interactions, education, commerce etc. (e.g. Canada, Singapore, Switzerland etc.). So, we cannot only define the speech community based on linguistic characteristics because the speakers of one community differentiate themselves from the other communities by using other factors as well: social, cultural, religious, ethnic, political etc. (Wardhaugh and Fuller, 2015).

On the other hand, one approach is often taken in sociolinguistics to define a speech community in that the speakers of a community share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behaviour in that community. William Labov (1972) also argues the same thing to define speech community, “The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms”. Though sometimes these norms are often at odds with prestige standards, it does not mean that speakers do not use them within and outside of the speech communities. But Labov’s definition is the opposite of Hymes’ view. For Hymes (2004), the concept of ‘speech community’ is a difficult one to grasp in its identity. So, he defines the speech community: ‘a local unit, characterized for its members by common locality and primary interaction’. The speakers of such communities use a language in different ways to maintain their separate identities within the dominant community (Hymes, 2004). For example, we can see that the people of ‘Old Dhaka’ speak in a different way which separates their identity from the people of Dhaka city. 

In sociolinguistics, the concept of a social network is also interrelated to the speech community. Milroy and Gordon (2008) also proclaim that the ‘concepts of network and community of practice are … closely related’. It is noticeable that a group of people within a larger community has a comparatively fixed relationship with one another, and they communicate among themselves in more or less expected ways. For instance, a group of students in a class at a university, a family, the working class people in a company etc. At the same time, the concept of social identities is also involved in the study of a speech community. It means that identity is not something the speakers have, but it is something they do. For example, the use of particular language varieties may contribute to a speaker’s identification such as the use of greeting formulas, gaze, or silence.

However, when people use languages, they say the same thing in various ways. Most of the variations are unplanned and may not occur under the speakers’ control, but there are some systematic variations which give the option for the speakers to choose consciously or subconsciously (Coulmas, 2005). For instance, speakers of Mymensingh region, a division of Bangladesh, have the choice among the words ‘chele’, ‘pula’, ‘put’, ‘genda’ when mentioning a boy, and ‘meye’, ‘maiya’, ‘gendi’ for referring to a girl.

It is seen that language variation happens at all levels of language, and we can understand it from sociolinguistics which represents the relationship between social factors and linguistic variation. While sociolinguists have analyzed the social factors, they have also tried to represent different types of linguistic variations such as phonetic, phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic. We can see these types of linguistic variations in our society, and the variation is more noticeable in those speech communities which are defined based on regional boundaries or geographic areas. For example, /h/ sound is used in the place of /k^h/ sound in Mymensingh region, such as ‘ehon’= /ehɔn/ is used instead of the standard word ‘ekhon’= /ek^hɔn/= now. So, we can see such type of linguistic variation in every speech community. 

In conclusion, it can be said that sociolinguistic variation is noticeable in our speech communities but it is difficult to analyze the exact reason behind it because speech community itself is a complex term to define it. So, if we want to know more about sociolinguistic variation, we need to observe the speech communities and study more because it varies from place to place. 

References:

1. Coulmas, F. (2005). Changing Language Regimes in Globalizing Environments. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2005(175-176), 3-15.
2. Hymes, D. (2004). ‘In vain I tried to tell you’: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
3. Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns (No. 4). University of Pennsylvania Press.
4. Lyons, J. (ed.) (1970). New Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
5. Milroy, L., & Gordon, M. (2008). Sociolinguistics: Method and interpretation (Vol. 13). John Wiley & Sons.
6. Patrick, P.L. (2002). The Speech Community. In Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation. Oxford: Blackwell.
7. Rahman, A. M. (2022, March 31). A comparison between the regional dialect of Sherpur and the standard form of Bangla language. ASM Mustafizur Rahman | Literature and English Language Teaching. https://www.mustafizur.net/2022/03/comparison-between-the-regional-dialect-of-sherpur-and-the-standard-form-of-bangla.html
8. Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, JM (2015). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (7th ed.). USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
9. Zhan, C. (2013). Speech Community and SLA. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 4 (6), 1327-1331.