Social Networks and Communities of Practice SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social Networks and Communities of Practice

SOCIAL NETWORKS Social networks can be defined as ‘the relationships individuals contract with others reaching out through social and geographical space linking many individuals’ (Milroy and Gordon 2003: 117). Whereas grouping people into social classes involves dividing them on the basis of factors that may matter to society as a whole (e. g. , how prestigious their jobs are), social networks group people on the basis of factors that are more idiosyncratic.

SOCIAL NETWORKS It is very important for sociolinguists to have a sense of what the patterns of associations are between people who are friends or roughly social equals within a community. This is because the diffusion of linguistic change happens relatively fast and very efficiently along horizontal channels (e. g. , within one age group and a social cohort). The vertical channels (e. g. , channels between generations or across big social divides) are a comparatively slow and inefficient means of transmitting innovation.

NETWORKS Social network theory was introduced to sociolinguistics from sociology. In other fields of the social sciences, social networks have been found to have a big impact on how innovations are spread through society. Cheshire (1982) distinguished between core members and peripheral and secondary members Core network member: the members centrally involved and actively participating in a friendship network. Peripheral and secondary members: who were progressively less involved.

DENSE AND LOOSE NETWORKS A dense network is one where the members all know each other. Dense networks slow down or inhibit change. Researchers hypothesize that in dense networks members police each other’s behavior (consciously or unconsciously) because of the intensity of their contact. Moreover, because in a dense network members’ contacts outside their network are comparatively superficial, there is less chance of being systematically exposed to innovations from outside.

DENSE AND LOOSE NETWORKS Loose networks make individuals more open to change. The ties that the individual members have to other networks provide an opportunity for them to be exposed to and pick up innovations from outside their network. In addition, the normative pressure of any single network will be decreased , because we assume speakers have to attend to the norms of the numerous different networks that their loose social ties give them membership to.

DENSE AND LOOSE NETWORKS

MULTIPLEX AND UNIPLEX TIES WITHIN NETWORKS Individuals in a social network can be linked through a single social relationship (a uniplex tie; e. g. mother ~ daughter) or through several social relationships (multiplex ties; e. g. cousins ~ coworkers~ neighbors) Again, the assumption is that a loose network based largely on many uniplex ties is going to be more open to the introduction and transmission of innovations than a dense one where members share multiplex ties.

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COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: HIGHLY LOCAL NETWORKS Unit of analysis introduced to sociolinguistics by Penelope Eckert and Sally Mc. Connell-Ginet in their research on language and gender. A smaller unit than a social network. Co-membership is defined on three criteria: Ø Mutual engagement: coming together in direct personal contact. The requirement for mutual engagement is a stricter measure for membership than is required for either social networks or social classes. It is possible to build up a social network that extends to and includes individual members who have no direct contact with each other but who inherit ties from others.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: HIGHLY LOCAL NETWORKS ü A jointly negotiated enterprise: the most crucial criterion for defining a community of practice. Without this, it is easy to subsume the community of practice under the notion of social networks. The criterion of a jointly negotiated enterprise tells us that the members of a community of practice are not just in contact with each other, but they are working towards some shared goal, or are defining and satisfying some specific enterprise.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: HIGHLY LOCAL NETWORKS ü A shared repertoire. In the domain of language, it includes shared ways of pronouncing words, shared jargon or slang, and in-jokes. A shared repertoire also enables some conversations to be continued over a period of days or weeks without any fuss, or without a sense that participants need much reorienting to the topic. Note that a shared repertoire need not suppose contact between members or face-to-face engagement. So a shared repertoire is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for defining a community of practice.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: HIGHLY LOCAL NETWORKS The community of practice framework provides a good basis for linguistics to talk about what constitutes ‘good communication’ and bring some of our research out of the academy and into practical applications for training; for example, sharing ideas about what works well or what doesn’t work in achieving some jointly negotiated enterprise.

Not all networks are equal The social networks, or the communities of practice in which a person is involved, have an impact on linguistic behavior, but a person’s childhood networks have a greater impact on some aspects of their speech than the networks they participate in at any other time in their life. A systematic linguistic patterns can emerge whether speakers are grouped in larger clusters like socioeconomic classes or in smaller clusters defined in terms of contact and shared goals within a social network.

How occupation interacts with social networks? The lower middle class (or second highest) social group seem more sensitive to changes in progress than any other social group. Why might this be? v A class-based analysis would suggest that these interior groups tend to be made up of people who are upwardly mobile, so they are especially alert to what’s coming in as the norm. Their lead with changes in progress might be a manifestation of a desire to accentuate the positive. v Because the lower middle class are second from the top they might have a sense of having almost ‘made it’ but not quite. As a consequence, they are on the lookout for any social markers that will suggest to others that they have made it and that they are now the ones setting the norms. In this case their lead could be seen more as a desire to eliminate the negative.

How occupation interacts with social networks? Perhaps the kinds of occupations associated with the interior social classes are also the kinds of occupations that bring people into contact with a wider variety of other speakers and speaking styles. Under this approach, the leading role of the lower middle class and upper working class have to do with the fact that they are exposed to more opportunities to expand their linguistic repertoire. This expanded input might be what enables them to lead other groups in change. They would both be exposed to more variation and in turn would play a crucial role in brokering the variation to others.

WHO LEADS? One study shows that speakers with the most ties outside their networks were more likely to be the brokers introducing and leading in the adoption of innovations. Other work emphasizing communities of practice have noticed the association between extreme variants of changes in progress with speakers who are engaged in more showiness and extreme social positioning overall. Again, these are often women or girls, and their showiness may be marked not only in their speech but also in their dress and the kinds of social activities they are associated with, . . The flipside to this is that some of the more extreme users of regionally marked traditional (or conservative) variants are often men who are likewise engaged in occupations that are strongly iconic of older lifestyles.