speech community (origin of the concept)

[Vincent de Rooij]

In a thesis proposal, a student of mine traces the concept of speech
community back to Labov's research in New York in the 1960s.
Of course, the use of the term 'speech community' has a longer history than
that: it occurs in the work of Hymes in the early sixties and also in
Ferguson's classic article 'Diglossia' published in Word in 1959. It is
also prominently present in Bloomfield's 'Language' (1933, Ch.3: Speech
communities), albeit, of course, with a somewhat different meaning.

I've already searched the Linganth and LinguistList archives: the same
question was asked by Vera Horvath on the LinguistList (5.1355, 24 Nov
1994), but it seems no one ever replied.


Vincent A. de Rooij
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology,
University of Amsterdam
O.Z. Achterburgwal 185,
1012 DK Amsterdam
The Netherlands

visit the Language and Popular Culture in Africa website:
<<http://www.pscw.uva.nl/lpca/>http://www.pscw.uva.nl/lpca/>
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