The speech community (SpCom), a core concept in empirical linguistics, is at the intersection of many principal problems in sociolinguistic theory and method. This paper traces its history of development and divergence, surveys general problems with contemporary notions, and discusses links to key issues in investigating language variation and change. It neither offers a new and correct definition nor rejects the concept (both are seen as misguided efforts), nor does it exhaustively survey the applications in the field (an impossibly large task).

The speech community

In contrast to a vast literature that provides information and guides about focus groups as a methodological tool, this book is an introduction to understanding focus groups as analytical means ...

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Dialogue in Focus Groups: Exploring Socially Shared Knowledge

The growth in Asian immigration and a diversity of Asian populations living in Western English-speaking societies pose many opportunities for qualitative research. Cultural competence is essential to credible qualitative nursing research employing interview data. The purpose of this article is to describe culturally competent qualitative research with Asian immigrants, especially in the design, interview phases, and analysis. Strategies to achieve cultural competence are synthesized within the model of cultural competence, integrating the literature review and data exemplars. Strategies for successful conduct of qualitative research in Asian immigrant populations, including preparation of the research team, techniques for the conduct of research interviews with Asian immigrants, and contextual meanings and timing of translation are offered. The article concludes with a summary of implications for future research.

Cultural Competence in Qualitative Interview Methods with Asian Immigrants

This paper describes the challenges faced, and rules devised, while dealing with bilingual interview data as part of a life history study of a female science teacher’s conceptions of the nature of science while teaching in a school in Karachi. The interview data generated was both in Urdu and English, which underwent a number of processes (transcription, translation, and transliteration) to evolve into “interim texts,” to finally become a part of the data analysis process. I have called these translated materials “transmuted texts,” as they reflect the original, but have been recreated. This paper is significant because as globalization connects diverse societies, more research studies have to deal with research data in more than one language. Key Words: Qualitative Research Methods, Interview Data Analysis, Bilingual Data, Transcription, Transliteration, and Translation

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Making Use of Bilingual Interview Data: Some Experiences from the Field.

This study investigates how second-generation Korean-American students form and transform their senses of ethnicity through their participation in Korean language classes. I did a one-year ethnographic study of the Korean language classes (basic and intermediate levels) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which were largely populated by second- and 1.5-generation Korean Americans. From these Korean-American college students, who have 'successfully' negotiated through the American educational system, I learned that becoming an English speaker does not necessarily mean the loss of ethnic identity, and that learning Korean (a 'heritage' language) does not necessarily lead to homogeneous ethnic identity formation. Although the classroom is certainly a place in which language knowledge is imparted, much classroom activity utilises words and grammatical points as semantic mediators of culture, history, and even politics; in short, the stakes are high. My ethnography focuses on the micro-practices o...

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Alessandro Duranti

Papers

Linguistic Anthropology: Linguistic diversity