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particular speech community. For example, members of a SpCom might agree that a
particular pronunciation pattern is prestigious, however, they may evaluate this
pattern positively or negatively depending on their centrality in the SpCom. This
reflects Labov‟s preoccupation with both evaluative behaviour and patterns of
variation. When a significant group of speakers differs on both levels, the model
treats them as a distinct SpCom. Hence, African-American speakers were treated
separately due to their phonological variation but also because they „reverse white
attitudes towards the cultural values of NYC speech‟ (Labov, 1966: 370). Working
from this Labovian viewpoint, it should correspond that the settled and Traveller
community comprise two individual speech communities due to their different
evaluative behaviours and (assumed) linguistic variation. However, it is
hypothesised that both communities will also share certain similarities especially in
the processes involved in the day-to-day business of being a family and the
consequences of this for definitions of SpCom need to be addressed.
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The importance of the SpCom to studies of language variation cannot be overstated.
However, as suggested earlier, it is a concept that has proven controversial. This
controversy and its impact on studies such as this one can be discussed under three
broad headings:
social class
,
geography
and
local speech communities
. From a
social class viewpoint, Labov (1966) and Trudgill (1974), among others, use multi-
index scales of social stratification where people are assigned a social class based on
occupation and women are given the same social class as their husbands. Social
class seems to be based on status and power where status refers to the amount of
respect a person is accorded and power to the social and material resources a person
can command (Jones, 1999). Hence, according to Milroy and Gordon (2003: 95), „a
class is rather vaguely said to consist of a group of persons sharing similar
occupations and incomes, lifestyles and beliefs.‟ The process of applying a label
such as „working class‟ to the Traveller Community is problematic in this context.
They share similar occupations and incomes to the traditional working class but their
lifestyles, and many of their beliefs, differ radically. Milroy and Gordon (
ibid
: 90)
repeatedly emphasise the need to interpret social class locally rather than globally.
Therefore, for the purposes of this study Travellers are considered „classless‟ due to
the fact that social class appears to be a „settled‟ concept devised by those in a more
powerful position in order to make some kind of social judgement about others
(Thornborrow, 1999). In comparison, the concept of
community of practice
permits a
focus on social categories (such as nerds, gangsters, drop-outs, families etc.) rather
than abstract categories like class and gender. Bucholtz (1999) maintains that the
SpCom is designed to analyse sociolinguistic phenomena at a macro-level; the
speech community approach is a
top-down
approach whereas the community of
practice is a
bottom-up
theory (see Section 3.3).
Geographically speaking, the Traveller Community cannot be accurately defined as
a SpCom due to their nomadism and interpretation of geography. According to
Milroy and Gordon (2003: 133), the classical procedure in describing a speech
community is for the researcher to specify a particular geographical location. For
example, Labov‟s (1966) study locates itself within Lower East Side New York,
while Trudgill (1974) examined language variation in the city of Norwich. Current
models of the SpCom do, however, stress the need for a „geographical area delimited
by non-linguistic criteria, such as demography or socio-political boundaries‟
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(Kerswill, 1994: 23). In terms of the present study, McDonagh (2000: 31) points out
that Irish settled people organise themselves within parishes and communities,
whereas Travellers organise themselves within families unbounded by notions of
geography. As already mentioned, MacLaughlin (1995: 16) has described the
Travellers as having a highly developed geographical imagination. For the SpCom to
be applied to the Traveller Community, a shift in the concept of the „space‟ language
occupies is needed. Whereas the traditional SpCom is bounded by the
where
, a
modern, more mobile version might be better served by being bounded by the
who
.
Finally, according to Hazen (2002: 505), large scale sociolinguistic studies have
most often focused on the speech community as the place where sociolinguistic
variation happens, in contrast to the individual or small social units being the locus
of variation. Bucholtz (1999: 209) maintains that in the SpCom, „the role of the
individual is merely to instantiate the practices of the group.‟ Rickford (1986, 1987)
claims that the concept of the SpCom is a limited approach not tailored to the local
speech community. In addition to this factor, previous SpCom research treated a
series of isolated individuals as representative of particular social categories in
contrast to theories such as that of the
social network
which study small-scale, pre-
existing social groups (see Section 3.3). The pitfalls of focussing on the individual as
representative of a larger social group are demonstrated by Labov‟s (1972: 89-90)
interview with Dolly R. This interview was interrupted by a telephone call from one
of her cousins. Labov notes how her „intimate family style‟ contrasts dramatically
with her „seemingly informal and casual‟ interview style. Hazen (2002: 501) sees the
family as the intermediate grouping between the individual and the speech
community. He claims that the study of the family from a variationist perspective
offers a middle ground and allows patterns of language variation in individuals to be
compared to be compared to subgroups of the SpCom that in turn can be used to
construct a picture of the overall speech community. One theory which does offer
the researcher a focus on the individual as opposed to the group is
social network
theory
and its suitability for the present study is assessed below.
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