Language Variation
The notion of speech community is most generally used as a tool to define a unit of analysis within which to analyse language variation and change. Stylistic features differ among speech communities based on factors such as the group's socioeconomic status, common interests and the level of formality expected within the group and by its larger society.
In Western culture, for example, employees at a law office would likely use more formal language than a group of teenage skateboarders because most Westerners expect more formality and professionalism from practitioners of law than from an informal circle of adolescent friends. This special use of language by certain professions for particular activities is known in linguistics as register; in some analyses, the group of speakers of a register is known as a discourse community, while the phrase "speech community" is reserved for varieties of a language or dialect that speakers inherit by birth or adoption.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)