The article discusses what a community of practice is and the value it has to Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology. It describes how there are two conditions of a community of practice and how they are crucial in regards to making it conventional. Communities of practice need to be a shared experience over time and a commitment to shared understanding to be conventional. It goes on to discuss the importance of communities of practice for the speech community.
http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/eckert2006.pdf
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