Professional and Political Communities - Essay Example

A speech community can also develop from sharing lifestyles, hobbies and interests. People are often members of more than one speech community as they traverse from childhood to adulthood. Multiplexity is a degree of the types of relationships among members of a community. It is an important aspect of speech communities derivative from observing the ways in which persons are related. Each of these communities has its identity, culture, rules of membership that an individual has to adapt to.

This essay seeks to identify a person’s journey across and between speech communities from childhood to adulthood. In childhood, a child is born to a speech community, the family. It is the basic speech community that the child has to adapt to their rules of membership, language and cultures. The family members share a language pattern that the child must adapt to. From the brothers, sisters and parents a child develops this language. The child grows up learning the language pattern the family members teach them.

The family dictates the speech norms, and as a child, the individual grows knowing that this is the language pattern they have to follow. The network strength in this community is based on family ties. The strength is strong since the family has a close-knit nature. The family has a low multiplexity level since it includes members with blood ties. After the family, the child starts attending school. At this stage, the child witnesses many speech communities. This depends on their characters and the activities they participate in in school.

In class, there exists a speech community between the teacher, the pupil and fellow pupils. In this community, the members use a formal language pattern with simple vocabulary. The members also have formal ties that relate to the curriculum. This speech community has a specific language pattern that all the members have to adhere to. The density of the network strength is loose between the pupils and the teacher. However, between the students, they share a strong network density. Multiplexity level in this community is regular in the sense that the teacher may be one of the pupil’s parents and a relative to a fellow student.

At school, the individual develops a friendship with peers either in class or during extracurricular activities. This friendship is based on sharing a common interest and hobbies. The friendship develops into a speech community where a group of friends shares the same language pattern. The social network in this community is dense since the members share ideas and interactions on a regular basis (Wardhaugh 120). Multiplexity is also common sense, in these friendship circles, the members can be related.

In this community, there exists a speech norm that each member enjoys and understands. Although the members differ in personal characteristics, they share the same hobbies and interests. For instance, it is common that members of this speech to share the same genre of music. This community can be from adolescence to early teenhood. From teenhood to adulthood, the individual meets up with a new speech community. This is usually in institutions of higher learning. The first speech community is in class depending on the course the person is studying.

This speech community is different from the junior and senior schools. At this stage, the vocabulary is complex, and the language is very formal. There exists a mutual relationship between the lecture or professors and students in a class. The professors and the students share loose network strength. The students, on the other hand, share strong network strengths due to the regular interactions. Multiplexity is at the highest level in this community. The members share different relationships among themselves.  A student can be related to a professor who is the head of a club or society that the same student attends.