Knowra Speech community Speech community A group whose members share norms for using and interpreting language. Its members may use different linguistic forms while recognizing common expectations for communication.
Sociolinguistic competence : Knowledge of how language choices fit social contexts, relationships, and communicative purposes. It describes the practical knowledge members use to follow community expectations.
Speech accommodation theory : A theory explaining how speakers adjust their communication in response to social relationships and interaction. Accommodation can align speakers with a community's norms or mark distance from them.
Leonard Bloomfield : An American linguist who helped establish structural linguistics in the early twentieth century. His influential definition emphasized groups connected by regular interaction and shared speech habits.
Linguistic community : A group connected by a shared language or linguistic system, though its members may differ in social norms. It can imply linguistic commonality without the shared usage conventions central here.
Language variety : A socially or geographically associated form of language with characteristic linguistic features. A community may share norms across several varieties rather than one uniform form.
Style-shifting : The adjustment of linguistic features across situations, audiences, or communicative goals. Members shift styles while drawing on shared expectations about context.
John Gumperz : An American sociolinguist known for research on interaction, linguistic diversity, and communicative inference. He broadened the concept beyond uniform speech toward shared interpretive conventions.
Community of practice : A group whose members develop shared practices through sustained mutual engagement in an activity. It defines belonging through joint practice rather than shared language-use norms alone.
Speech style : A way of speaking that varies with situation, audience, identity, or communicative purpose. Style-shifting shows how members adapt speech to shared social expectations.
Language socialization : The process through which people learn language and the social practices associated with its use. It is one route by which newcomers acquire a community's speaking norms.
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