1. Communities of Practice Tuesday, February 3rd

2. Housekeeping activities Video consent form Turn in slang investigation sheets Make name tents

3. Goals for the day Know the difference between slang, accent, and dialect. Know what a community of practice is and be able to give examples

4. Linguistic landscape examples One person from each group will share the example they noticed over the weekend. Describe: What, when, where, who? Analyze: What’s interesting? What’s the purpose? Reflect: What’s your reaction? Why?

5. Definition “A community of practice is a group of people who come together around a shared activity. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations - in short, practices-emerge in the course of this shared activity. A community of practice is different from the traditional community, mainly because it is defined by its membership and by the activity in which the members participate. In addition, relations between and among communities of practice are important: Individuals often participate in several communities of practice” (adapted from Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992).

6. Communities of Practice, cont. Individually think of an example of a community of practice.

7. Slang, accent, and dialect Slang: a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people; usually associated with young speakers and in-group speech

8. Slang, accent, and dialect Accent: recognized sound features that help distinguish one variety of language from another; these include vowel/consonant pronunciation, intonation (how a person’s voice rises and falls), syllable stress, tempo of speech. Everyone has one! SoCal: fronted /o/, uptalk, long vowels UK English /mum/ vs. US. English /mom/ este /ehte/ lapicero

9. Slang, accent, and dialect Dialects: two varieties of the same language that differ in word structure, sentence structure, lexicon (words people use) and word meaning in addition to accent sound features Western PA:My car needs washed. Pittsburgh, PA:My car needs washed [worsht]. Elsewhere: My car needs to be washed. Castilian Spanish:Vosotros estais

10. Pittsburgh Dad

11. Accent: up and down /dahn/ the aisles /ahls/ self check out /aht/ Dialect: Nah, yinz ain’t ridin’ in the buggies Gram & Pap He ain’t allowed here no more

12. Slang, accent, or dialect? In your groups, decide whether each feature on your worksheet is an example of a slang, accent, or dialect feature and write it in the appropriate column. Some features may fit in more than one category. Be able to defend your choice.