Editing Sociolinguistics (section)

=== Social network ===
Understanding language in society means that one also has to understand the [[Social network (sociolinguistics)|social network]]s in which language is embedded.  A social network is another way of describing a particular speech community in terms of relations between individual members in a community. A network could be ''loose'' or ''tight'' depending on how members interact with each other.<ref name="Wardhaugh">{{citation|last=Wardhaugh|first=Ronald|title=An Introduction to Sociolinguistics|place=New York|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|year=2006}}</ref> For instance, an office or factory may be considered a tight community because all members interact with each other. A large course with 100+ students would be a looser community because students may only interact with the instructor and maybe 1–2 other students. A ''multiplex'' community is one in which members have multiple relationships with each other.<ref name="Wardhaugh"/> For instance, in some neighborhoods, members may live on the same street, work for the same employer and even intermarry.

The looseness or tightness of a social network may affect speech patterns adopted by a speaker. For instance, Sylvie Dubois and Barbara Horvath found that speakers in one Cajun Louisiana community were more likely to pronounce English "th" [θ] as [t] (or [ð] as [d]) if they participated in a relatively dense social network (i.e. had strong local ties and interacted with many other speakers in the community), and less likely if their networks were looser (i.e. fewer local ties).<ref name="DuboisHorvath">Dubois, Sylvie and Horvath, Barbara. (1998). "[https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/DuboisHorvath1998.pdf Let's tink about dat: Interdental Fricatives in Cajun English]." Language Variation and Change 10 (3), pp 245–61.</ref>

A social network may apply to the macro level of a country or a city, but also to the interpersonal level of neighborhoods or a single family. Recently, social networks have been formed by the Internet through online chat rooms, Facebook groups, organizations, and online dating services.