speech community
nounEtymology Probably a calque of German Sprachgemeinschaft.
1
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences A group of people sharing a language, or a particular way of using that language
- The phonetic laws always work without the consciousness of the speech community in which they act ; they are due wholly to physiological causes acting unknown to the will of the individual speaker.1897, William Pierce Shepard, A contribution to the history of the unaccented vowels in Old French, page 17:
- Another language of this group, Cantonese, probably ranks among the world's largest speech-communities.1933, Leonard Bloomfield, Language, page 44:
1 more example
- Research indicates that men and women in the mainstream US culture tend to form separate speech communities.2006, Mary Barrett, Marilyn Davidson, Gender and Communication at Work, page 271: