Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

11.2 Language and groups of speakers
Language and groups of speakers 201
●
Do you belong to a community with a single language or a community that
uses more than one? Which is preferable?
●
Of all the groups to which you belong – family, religion, nation, and so on –
how important is the group of L1 speakers? Of L2 users?
●
What modern jobs necessarily require the use of a second language?
Focusing questions
Let us now turn to the groups of L2 users that people may belong to, that is, mem-
bership of a community in the Lang
4
sense of language. While language is often
seen as a shared core value of the community (Smolicz and Secombe, 2003), it is
not always a necessary requirement; Jewish communities, for instance, have his-
torically spoken diverse languages across the world, such as Yiddish (Myhill,
2003). Nor are the members of the community necessarily fluent in its language,
as with Scottish Gaelic (Dorian, 1981). People may be part of a community with-
out speaking its language – how many Irish Americans speak Irish?
As well as monolingual communities, there are many communities where it is
necessary to use more than one language. India, for example, has a ‘three-language
formula’ 3
 1: everyone has to know not only Hindi and English, but also the
local language of a particular state. If the local state language is Hindi or English,
they only need two languages (3
1); if neither Hindi nor English is the state 

---

language and they speak another language, they need four languages (3
 1) (Laitin,
2000). It is taken for granted that the community itself is multilingual, the lan-
guages involved varying by individual and by state. The ongoing discussion of ELF
recognizes at least one widespread L2 user community, crossing national bound-
aries and becoming detached from the native speaker, as Latin once separated
from Italy.