speech community (origin of the concept)

[P L Patrick]

Vincent, Tim, Alexandre,
	obviously, you are all correct. It's an interesting topic.
	You or your students may be interested in an article I've
recently (I think, I haven't seen the book yet!) published on the
SpComm concept, following it from Herder and von Humboldt thru Sapir,
Bloomfield, Gumperz, Hymes, Labov, and more recent takes.
	I do address the linguistic community vs speech community
issue, and the 19th C history, both briefly, though I haven't tried to
locate its origins per se. The main point is to work out the concept's
articulation with various issues and developments in investigating
language variation and change.
	I also argue against the frequent tendency to reject, ignore,
polemicize or self-servingly define the concept, and for an almost-lost
cause that Ferguson certainly espoused: a proper sociolinguistic
taxonomy, fitting case studies to typology and refining the latter,
employing the SpCom.
	The article evolved from my frustration over the years in
attempting to understand the various uses of the concept well enough to
teach them authoritatively. A webpage quoting 17 or so definitions and
references, perhaps useful in teaching, is on my website at:
	
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/Courses/socio/SpeechComDefs.html

The article has allegedly appeared, or will any day in JK Chambers, P
Trudgill & N Schilling-Estes (eds.), Handbook of language variation and
change [Oxford: Blackwell], but I don't have page numbers.
	--peter

Prof. Peter L. Patrick
Dept. of Language & Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ
U.K.

Tel: (from within UK) 01206.87.2088
    (from outside UK) +44.1206.87.2088
Fax: (as above)           1206.87.2198
Email: patrickp at essex.ac.uk
Web: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp