Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

gusthuber · Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 89

Nursery teachers should have a better position in society / in the community.

Is there any difference?

wanderkind · Joined: 04 Mar 2014 Posts: 32

Both refer to groups of people, they're mostly different in their scale.

Society is usually used to refer to 'everyone'. In a country (group of people sharing culture), or the world. A large scale. (occasionally it is used to refer to a club, which would be small...confusing, right?)
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/society

A community can be large or small. It can be the people in your neighbourhood, your area, or even the members of an internet forum (you are a member of the eslcafe community, for example).
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/community

So society is generally larger groups (tend to be culture based), community generally smaller (tend to be location based). Both can refer to groups of people that share an interest.