The Community of Practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research JANET HOLMES School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand janet.holmes@vuw.ac.nz MIRIAM MEYERHOFF Department of Linguistics University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI 96822 mhoff@hawaii.edu ABSTRACT This article provides an introduction to this issue of Language in Society by exploring the relationship of the concept of Community of Practice (CofP) to related terms and theoretical frameworks. The criterial characteristics and constitutive features of a CofP are examined; the article points out how a CofP framework is distinguished from other sociolinguistic and social psy- chological frameworks, including social identity theory, speech community, social network and social constructionist approaches. (Community of Prac- tice, speech community, gender, sex, social practice, ethnographic sociolin- guistics, discourse analysis) The term “Community of Practice” (CofP) has recently shouldered its way into the sociolinguistic lexicon. The purpose of this issue of Language in Society is to provide analyses of language variation, discourse, and language use that illustrate the potential (and also the limits) of this concept as a theoretical and methodolog- ical basis for inquiry. It is not generally helpful to add a term to one’s field unless it is intended to serve some demonstrably useful purpose. The term “Community of Practice” bears a strong similarity to the existing term “speech community” – a concept that has proved to be a productive and useful tool for research into the orderly het- erogeneity of language in its social setting; thus it must be shown how the CofP in some way takes us farther toward our goal of understanding the constraints on natural language variation. In addition, some sociolinguists may see in the CofP a tool for the description of language variation that bears a strong resemblance to fundamental principles Language in Society 28, 173–183. Printed in the United States of America © 1999 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045/ 99 $9.50 173 https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/2FDA5017C035E21EC5AB06845482B3D9 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 207.241.231.82, on 24 Jul 2018 at 17:28:28, subject to the Cambridge Core