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Labov's views on the nature of the speech community rest
upon four precepts.
-- A speech community is constituted by a set of variable
features unique to it. <[LINK]>
-- Production of speech by any particular member of the speech
community might include only a partial subset of all the
features available to the community. <[LINK]>
-- Speech communities reside within independently measureable
social communities. <[LINK]>
-- Although production within a community is variable,
comprehension is normalized for all individual members of a
community. <[LINK]>
In many ways, Labov idealizes the community, or at least
sets it as a fixed point around which his models and data can be
interpreted unambiguously. If one believes in the same standards
of community as Labov, and if one believes that every member of a
particular community shares the same relatively homogeneous and
complete system of comprehension, then his leaps from correlation
to cause can be made with confidence.