Sociolinguistics

Languages, Dialects, and Speech Communities

When examining language in its social context, one immediately apparent problem is how to determine the difference between a language and its various dialects. From a linguistic standpoint, two varieties of speech are considered dialects of the same language if those varieties are mutually intelligible, that is, if speakers of the different varieties can understand one another reasonably well. Thus, Americans, British, and Australians, for example, are all considered speakers of English, although there are distinct dialects in these various geographic locations, which include differences in accents, vocabulary, and a variety of speaking conventions. From this definition, it follows that speakers of different language varieties who cannot understand one another are using different languages.

On the whole, this distinction between a language and a dialect works reasonably well. From the viewpoint of particular language situations, however, the dividing line between what is considered a language as opposed to a dialect is often more the product of sociopolitical realities than of actual linguistic factors. Most speakers of Norwegian and Swedish or of Hindi and Urdu (spoken in India and Pakistan), for example, can converse with one another relatively easily. Because of the political boundaries separating the countries where these varieties are found, however, these speech codes are given different names and generally considered to be distinct languages. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the many so-called dialects of Chinese found in mainland China, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as in a number of other countries throughout Asia, are actually so different when spoken that speakers of these “dialects” cannot understand one another at all. Since these varieties all share a common writing system, however, people generally group them all together under the label “Chinese.” (A similar situation exists for the numerous regional varieties of Arabic throughout the Middle East and northern Africa.) This ambiguity between what should be called a language and what should be called a dialect has led some linguists to quip that a language is just a dialect with an army and navy.

In the field of sociolinguistics, a more helpful concept for examining language in its social context is that of speech community. A speech community consists of a group of individuals who have similar ideas and expectations about the way that language should be [Page 1331]used. This definition does not imply that those same individuals all use language in exactly the same way. In fact, there may be some variation in a speech community with respect to the frequency or precise realization of specific linguistic items by different speakers. What the speakers share, what unite them into a speech community, are common norms of language behavior.

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