Cixiu Duan
When reading the Van Herk’s Chapter 2, I was thinking about the three social group models and the impact that the society has on the use of language.
Speech community, social network and community of practice are three models of social groups from bigger to smaller, or local. Speech community is a group of people who share the same linguistic norms although they may hold different beliefs on other aspects. In addition, people in the same speech community may switch from one language to another under certain circumstance. For example, professors and students at McGill all share the same language – English because it is the language of instruction. They belong to the same speech community at school. However, Chinese students are more likely to use Chinese when they hold party or discuss the group assignment. Students from Quebec tend to use French at local community when they get home. The concept of social network could explain why people sometimes shift from one language to another. People usually participate in multiple networks, thus use different languages when deal with different people. Take myself as example, Shanghainese is my home language. English is school language. I speak Chinese with local Chinese immigrants (e.g. restaurants, markets, friends). And I speak French with local people. It is necessary to change the language according to the social network.
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