The community of practice as a framer of discursive norms (case study: best man speech)

Abstract

The paper explores the constraints on natural language variation in British best man speeches, as well as the underlying mechanisms of the best man’s communicative choices. Not being subject to any rigid external regulation in the form of set text or etiquette rules, the best man speech, however, invariably shows marked uniformity in terms of the speaker’s prevalent discourse choices. In order to identify the discursive norms conventionally associated with British best man speeches, the paper sets out to view the participants of a wedding reception as an emergent community of practice performing in accordance with interiorised and mutually shared norms of appropriateness which, incidentally, serve as criteria of membership. Drawing on the analysis of 60 British best man speeches (with particular focus on their global scenario, thematic elements, and key discursive strategies), the paper identifies rapport-management tools strategically employed by the best man within the analysed context. The interpretive approach adopted in the study minimizes the risk of overlooking lay conceptualisations of (im)politeness, which is a notable shortcoming of many theoretical models. One noteworthy feature of the findings is that it is only by virtue of context that the identified rapport-management tools are interpretable as polite, which goes to show that linguistic behaviour should not be evaluated as polite unless it conforms to the norms of appropriateness specific to a certain community of practice.