Communities of Practice

Question 1

What is a community of practice?

Answer 1

A CoP is a group of people who “share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. (E.g., Families, People on the same flight are not a CoP, needs to be a community that ‘practices’ together)

Question 2

How does Leonard Bloomfield define “Speech community” (1930)?

Answer 2

• “a group of people who interact by means of speech”
• Bloomfield recognized that, in addition to speaking the same language, these people also agree about what is considered “proper” or “improper” uses of language.

Question 3

How does Gumperz define “Speech community” (1960)?

Answer 3

• “any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage”.
• Regardless of the linguistic differences among them, the speech varieties employed within a speech community form a system because they are related to a shared set of social norms.
• Shared community membership
• Shared linguistic communication

Question 4

How does Chomsky define “Homogenous Speech community”?

Answer 4

• concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.

Question 5

How does Labov define “Speech community”?

Answer 5

• is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms: these norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant in respect to particular levels of usage.

Question 6

What’s Social Network Theory?

Answer 6

• Social network theory focuses on the role of social relationships in transmitting information, channeling personal or media influence, and enabling attitudinal or behavioral change.
• The two-step flow of communication hypothesis, the theory of weak ties, and the theory of diffusion of innovations are three major theoretical approaches that integrate network concepts in understanding the flow of mediated information and its effects.
• Different types of networks & online communities: Family, Friends, University, Work, Public vs. Private, all social media apps
• How is this language contact studied? –> Mediagram research

Question 7

A social theory of learning includes

Answer 7

• Meaning – a way of talking about our ability – individually/collectively - to experience our life and the world as meaningful.
• Practice – talking about shared historical and social frameworks, perspectives that sustain mutual engagement in action.
• Identity – ways of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the contexts of our communities.

Question 8

Defining features of CoP

Answer 8

• Mutual engagement (engaged diversity, relationship, doing things together, social complexity, community maintenance)
• Joint enterprise (mutual accountability, rhythms, local response)
• Shared repertoire (stories, styles, artifacts, tools, actions, historical events, discourses, concepts)

Question 9

Peripheral vs. core members

Answer 9

• “Peripheral participants are not core members, but they contribute to some of the practices of a given community of practice. Marginal participants are involved in the same activity as community of practice members, but not in an ‘engaged’ way” (Moore)