Communities of practice in sociolinguistics

2. ORIGIN
 The notion community of practice was developed by
Jean Lave (anthropologist) and Etienne Wenger
(computer scientist/Educationist) - (Lave and Wenger
1991)
 In 1989- the newly-founded Institute for Research on
Learning in Palo Alto, California.
 Dedicated to an interdisciplinary exploration of learning
 It also spread quickly into business and education

3. Lave and Wenger's research
 Wenger worked with anthropologist Jean Lave
 Observing apprenticeships among traditional tailors in Africa.
 Jean Lave looked at how tailors in Liberia learnt the skills of tailoring
as part of a larger social process that involved getting to know how
to be a constructive member of the community of all tailors
 Findings…
 Lave and Wenger first used the term communities of practice to
describe learning through practice and participation, which they
named situated learning.
 The term "community of practice" is that group that Lave and Wenger
referred to- who share a common interest and a desire to learn from
and contribute to the community with their variety of experiences
(Lave & Wenger 1991).

5. Communities of practice are not
new phenomena

6. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
 It Introduced to sociolinguistics by Penelope Eckert and Sally
McConnell in their research on language and gender
“An aggregate of people who come together
around mutual engagement in an endeavour.
ways of doing things,ways of
talking,beliefs,values,power relations in short-
practices emerge in the course of this mutual
endeavour” (Eckert and Mc Connell-1992)

7. STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Mutual engagement
(The ties/relationships
that bind the members of
the community
together/Direct personal
contact)
A shared
repertoire
(variety/set of
common
resources/Skills)
A joint negotiated
enterprise
(shared
understanding/
speech styles, it also
includes other social
practices/shared
goals)

8. No Hierarchy
Williams
Cohen Cross Sen Stock Shapiro
Taylor O'Brien
Jones
Andrews Moore
Miller
Smith
Hughes
Ramirez
Bell
Cole
Hussain
Kelly
Paine
Exploration Drilling Production
C&G Petrophysical ReservoirProduction

9. Network
Williams
Cohen
Cross
Sen
Stock
Shapiro
Taylor
O'Brien
Jones
Andrews
Moore
Miller
Smith
Hughes
Ramirez
Bell
Cole
Hussain
Kelly
Paine

10. CRUCIAL
ELEMENTS
IN A COP
Community of Practice
Practice
(practition
ers having
shared
practice)
Community
(in joint
activities and
discussions,
help each
other, and
share
information)
Domain
(identity,
interests and a
shared
competence
that
distinguishes
members from
other people)

12.  Wenger argues that communities of practice are
groups of people who share a concern or a
passion for something they do and who interact
regularly to learn how to do it better. They
include families developing their own practices,
routines and rituals; workers organizing their
lives with their immediate colleagues and
customers; students at school,recovering
alcoholics at weekly meetings; and scientists.
EXAMPLES:
 Pharmaceutical reps (“drug detailers”)
 Research chemists
 reading groups

13. RESEARCH
 The community of practice works very well as an analytic framework in
studies of workplace interaction.
To identify the relevance of all three criteria: mutual engagement, a jointly
negotiated enterprise and a shared repertoire.
 For answering linguistic questions about how new linguistic forms take hold
and spread in a community,
The community of practice provides a framework that is well suited to more
applied goals in linguistics.
 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.

14. CONCLUSION
In the very loosest usage of the
term a community of practice is
defined by its membership
being voluntary and behaviour
“self organizing” and it is a
community of practice merely
because it is about work, not a
leisure time activity.

15. REFERENCES
Carmen Llamas, L. M. (Ed.). (2007). THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO
SOCIOLINGUISTICS. New York: Routledge.
MEYERHOFF, M. (2006). Introducing Sociolinguistics. New York:
Routledge .