DIALOGUE Communities of practice in sociolinguistics What is the role of power in sociolinguistic variation? Penelope Eckert Stanford University, California E ¤ tienneWenger Learning for a small planet, North SanJuan, California The Davies article (page 557 of this issue) has an important underlying premise ^ that we need to understand the role of power generally in linguistic practice, and specifically in variation and the spread of change.We agree with this premise, and concur that communities of practice are a good locus for studying how power is organized and exercised in day-to-day linguistic practice. However, we are concerned that her approach might be misleading. Davies argues that hierarchy and acceptance are a pair of concepts that are missing from the framework. If by hierarchy she means any power structure whatever form it takes, then it is already in the theory. A community of practice by definition is such a power structure in a way that we will articulate shortly. Calling it a hierarchy may draw attention to the centrality of power issues, but it does not add anything conceptually. If as we suspect she means something much more specific, a stratified structure that confers power according to positions, then we believe that it is an oversimplification of the question of power in communities of practice and that it should not be built into the theory. We will argue that one has to be verycareful about what one builds into a theory. Pairing two largely linear and uni-directional concepts such as hierarchy and acceptance has several related connotations that we find problematic: . the existence of a structure that confers power according to position . the expectation that one can explain (and indeed predict) to whom the structure confers power byarticulating the nature of the structure itself . an assumption of linear stratification with a well-defined top and bottom . a suggestion that legitimacy is an issue for those at the bottom and that those on top have free choice to accept or not those at the bottom. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9/4, 2005: 582^589 # Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.