speech community

A group of speakers, whether located in one area or scattered, who recognize the same language or dialect of a language as a standard.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

speech community

(Linguistics) a community consisting of all the speakers of a particular language or dialect

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

speech′ commu`nity

the aggregate of all the people who use a given language or dialect.

[1930–35]

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Noun

speech community - people sharing a given language or dialect

community - a group of people living in a particular local area; "the team is drawn from all parts of the community"

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References in periodicals archive ?

A living language needs a community - in the jargon "a speech community" - a group of people who normally communicate with each other through it, rather than any other language (in this case English) on a daily basis There are different kinds of communities.

Navigating the long and winding road to a million Welsh-speakers

Conventional sociolinguistics draws on the same ideological vision of the world as structural linguistics and societal functionalism, says Tirvassen, in that its basic unit of analysis is the system: language, language varieties, and even the speech community conceived as systems.

Sociolinguistics and the Narrative Turn: Researching Language and Society in Contexts of Change and Transition

While South African law recognizes all three forms of marriage, the concept of 'marriage' remains contested among the Afrikaans speech community. Pamela Kanakwa (Chapter Five) reflects on male circumcision among the Bagisu of Eastern Uganda.

Doing Conceptual History in Africa

In 1996 the Tonga speech community revived TOLACCO and in 2001 Zimbabwe Indigenous Languages Promotion Association (ZILPA) was formed and had six languages namely: Kalanga, Tonga, Sotho, Nambya and Venda.

The Capacity Building Programme of the Government of Zimbabwe: Opening Opportunities to the Teaching of Minority Languages in Schools in Zimbabwe

are related, we are saying that we consider it proven that there was at some time in the past a single speech community (which we usually call Proto-Dravidian), and that each of these modern languages represents a historical continuation of some portion of that earlier community - since we know of no other circumstances which could give rise to the linguistic similarities among these languages."

In search of Tamil's cousin in Pakistan

"The name of the language, Walmiki, "is interesting and indicative because the speech community claims descent from the great Indian saint-poet Valmiki," the release added.

Two new languages discovered by Hyderabad University professor

Each speech community has rules on what can be said (or not said) and how it should be said.

Need to talk

With the limited availability of speech disorder rehabilitation services in Pakistan, it will help these patients to restore their lost communicative ability with confidence and can assist in making them active member of their speech community, not a social burden.