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In discussing speech communities, William Labov emphasized the social and evaluative
norms shared by members: “A speech community cannot be conceived as a group of speakers
who all use the same forms; it is best defined as a group who share the same norms in regard
to language … who share a set of social attitudes toward language (1972;158, 248). In his
view, norms are revealed by the ways that members of a community evaluate their own and
others’ speech.
Although the notion of speech community is useful in delineating a group of speakers, it
is an abstraction in the sense that individuals do not interact with all other members. In order to
focus on people who actually interact, Lesley Milroy and James Milroy developed the concept
of speech network (1978, 1980). People in a speech network have contact with each other on
a regular basis, although the frequency of their interactions and the strength of their association
vary. Thus, people in “dense networks” have daily, or at least frequent, contact. They are likely
to be linked by more than one type of bond – that is, they may be related, live in the same
neighborhood, and work together. In addition, all of their associates also know each other.
People in “weak networks” have less regular contact and do not know all of each others’
associates.
Dense networks exert pressure on members to conform because values are shared and
individuals’ behavior can be readily known. Because linguistic usage is one type of behavior
that is monitored and regulated within dense networks, members tend to maintain speech
norms with little variation. In contrast, members of weak networks do not share values as
consistently. And weak networks do not have mechanisms that can apply social sanction
against nonconformists on an individual basis, although the society as a whole does exert
pressures for conformity through the transmission of cultural models on both conscious and
nonconscious levels.
The concept of speech network is useful because it focuses on actual speakers and
explains the mechanisms of control that lead to establishing and maintaing group norms in
small-scale, daily interactions. Speech is constantly, although nonconsciously, evaluated.
Speakers, therefore, are always vulnerable to the judgements of their peers.

COMPONENTS OF THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION
In his “Foundations in Sociolinguistics” Hymes singles out several components of
communication requiring description:
The SPEAKING model by Hymes
S setting and scene
P participants
E ends: the purpose / outcome
A act sequence
K key
I instrumentalities
N norms of interaction
G genres

1. The various kinds of participants in communicative events – senders and receivers,
addressers and addressees, interpreters and spokesmen, and the like;
2. The various available channels, and their modes of use, speaking, printing, drumming,
blowing, whistling, singing, face and body motion as visually perceived, smelling,
tasting, and tactile sensation;