Why Be Normal By Maria Bucholtz Summary
In the article “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls.” Bucholtz first described what both speech community, and community of practice were? According to her definition, Speech community was a language-based unit of social analysis used in traditional sociolinguistics research. The community of practice, on the other hand, was an ethnographic, activity-based approach. In her research paper, she strongly agreed with the theory of community of practice. The reason why she strongly supported with the method was that in the process of the community of practice researchers could examine both aspects of language and society. On the other side, the speech community can solely deal with the issue related to language.
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To help me better understand her points I needed to find out some further explanations in the article. I found her reference to both Bourdieu and Certeau to be the exact thing which I am looking for. Both researchers mainly talked about the hexis and habitus (speak, walk, read, or eat) which were our individual actions utilised in socialisation. Their supports on non-linguistic methods of communication upholds Bucholtz’s argument that speech community was limited as non-linguistic methods which didn’t necessarily only involve language. In her later research she mentioned six limitations of the speech community. These limitations sorted out all of the negative aspects of speech community in the relation of conformity and standardisation. She made an excellent point because speech community was initially presumed to have unified standards built by central community members. Not everyone in the community allowed to speak out their thoughts and instead generalised by social a
To help me better understand her points I needed to find out some further explanations in the article. I found her reference to both Bourdieu and Certeau to be the exact thing which I am looking for. Both researchers mainly talked about the hexis and habitus (speak, walk, read, or eat) which were our individual actions utilised in socialisation. Their supports on non-linguistic methods of communication upholds Bucholtz’s argument that speech community was limited as non-linguistic methods which didn’t necessarily only involve language. In her later research she mentioned six limitations of the speech community. These limitations sorted out all of the negative aspects of speech community in the relation of conformity and standardisation. She made an excellent point because speech community was initially presumed to have unified standards built by central community members. Not everyone in the community allowed to speak out their thoughts and instead generalised by social a