A speech community is “All
those who share specific rules for speaking and interpreting speech and at
least one speech variety” (Salzmann, Stanlaw, & Adachi, 2015, p. 266).
Everybody belongs to many speech communities. The diversity of speech
communities in an individual’s life is fascinating. They all share important
characteristics, but also have traits that make them distinct.
One of the main concepts
that ties speech communities together is kinship terms. These terms indicate
social status and often are apparent in the level of politeness of the speaker
and honorifics used by the speaker (Salzmann, et al., 2015, p. 218). We often use
these without thinking about them. They are determined by the context, or
speech situation, in which we are speaking (Salzmann, et al., 2015, p. 268). Unless
they are trying to cause a disturbance a speaker is going to use a completely different
tone in a classroom than they are going to employ at the bar on Saturday night.
They are also going to use different language.
References:
Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2015). Language, culture, and society (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2015). Language, culture, and society (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
I agree that speech communities are an interesting topic of study. I found your discussion of kinship as it pertains to a speech community interesting. As I sit here and ponder my own speech communities, I find that I definitely ‘switch gears’ for different situations. How I communicate with my direct family may be considered rude, grungy, boisterous, and even distasteful in many cases (nothing wrong with that, my family is just loud and obnoxious)! We are not the easily offended type. Then there is a gradient that improves in terms of couth as I apply the same thought process to my best friend’s family (like a second family), and then my girlfriend’s family. I am on my best behavior around my girlfriend’s folks, and tend to keep conversations fairly objective because there is not a lot of middle ground between them and myself (there are some exceptions in her family, but that’s a whole new speech community). When I am around my best friend’s family, I am somewhere kind of in the middle in terms of behavior and what is discussed. We can be ridiculous and crude, but tend to reign things in and maintain some element of ‘normalcy’ when the interaction is said and done.
ReplyDeleteKinship terms are interesting when comparing the terms used in different languages. English has all the common ones for immediate family, such as mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, etc. As mentioned in class, Japanese has different kinship terms to describe the narrator's older brother compared to his younger brother. Such a distinction could be useful to a listener. If it is necessary to the story, the English speaker has to add a modifier to the word "brother." The same thing exists for the word cousin in the English language. The English word is gender-neutral, but French has two separate words for the speaker's "girl-cousin" or "boy-cousin."
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