speech community (origin of the concept)

[Vincent de Rooij]

Thanks to all who replied to my posting to the list.

I find The 'German connection' (Herder, Humboldt) mentioned by Timothy,
Alexandre, and Peter especially interesting. Perhaps this was Bloomfield's
main source of inspiration? Saussure almost certainly wasn't: his influence
on American linguistics during the first half of the 20th c. was negligible
(at least that's what Hymes & Fought say in American Structuralism, The
Hague, 1975).

Peter, I will certainly read your article on this topic (BTW I couldn't
reach your website, will try again later).

vincent de rooij

At 05:21 PM 11/15/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>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