Communicative competence
المؤلف:
Muriel Saville-Troike
المصدر:
Introducing Second Language Acquisition
الجزء والصفحة:
C5P106
2025-11-17
42
Communicative competence
From a social perspective, the notion of linguistic competence which was introduced in Chapter 1 is inadequate to account for what is being acquired in any language that is going to be used for communicative purposes. Dell Hymes (1966), in establishing the framework for a field he called the Ethnography of Communication, made a critical observation that speakers who can produce any and all of the grammatical sentences of a language (which satisfies Chomsky’s 1965 definition of “competence”) would be institutionalized if they indiscriminately went about trying to do so. The concept of communicative competence became a basic tenet in the then-emerging field of sociolinguistics, and was soon adopted as well by many specialists in the field of SLA and language teaching. This term can be defined simply as “what a speaker needs to know to communicate appropriately within a particular language community” (Saville-Troike 2003). It involves knowing not only the vocabulary, phonology, grammar, and other aspects of linguistic structure (although that is a critical component of knowledge) but also when to speak (or not), what to say to whom, and how to say it appropriately in any given situation. Further, it involves the social and cultural knowledge speakers are presumed to have which enables them to use and interpret linguistic forms.
The term language community refers to a group of people who share knowledge of a common language to at least some extent. Multilingual individuals are often members of more than one language community – generally to different degrees, and the one or ones they orient themselves to at any given moment is reflected not only in which segment of their linguistic knowledge they select, but which interaction skills they use, and which features of their cultural knowledge they activate. As we have already seen, the competence of nonnative speakers of a language may differ significantly from the competence of native speakers, even as they may participate in the same or overlapping language communities. This may include structural differences in the linguistic system, different rules for usage in writing or conversation, and even somewhat divergent meanings for the “same” lexical forms. Further, a multilingual speaker’s total communicative competence differs from that of a monolingual in including knowledge of rules for the appropriate choice of language and for switching between languages, given a particular social context and communicative purpose.
The steadily increasing use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in L2 instruction adds even further complexities to our concepts of language community and of language function and form. Although this is a virtual community, since it is an artificial environment that is provided by computers, it is still a very real component of many L2 learners’ experiences. In this instructional situation, the interactive community membership is usually limited to students who are all learners (or novices) in a common L2, but members may differ greatly from one another in L1 identity and level of L2 proficiency. There is also an expert category of membership – usually teachers, often native L2 speakers, who can observe and support the language performance of novice members if they wish. All members are multilingual to some degree. The function of language use in this virtual setting always has some metalinguistic element (using language to learn language), but may also be to express opinions, share information, collaborate on the construction of texts, and increase solidarity with other learners. Teachers use it to enrich and diversify learning experiences, evaluate student progress, and perhaps adjust level and focus of classroom instruction. The form of language used in CMC is as complex as are its constructs of community and function. It may be oral or written, involve synchronous or delayed interaction, and call for colloquial or formal varieties of the target language. Long-range goals of L2 learning (e.g. whether for travel, business, or academic pursuits) greatly influence those variables.
Differences between monolingual and multilingual communicative competence are due in part to the different social functions of first and second language learning, and to the differences between learning language and learning culture. L1 learning for children is an integral part of their socialization into their native language community: a child’s native language is normally part of his or her native culture, and thus part of the body of knowledge, attitudes, and skills which are transmitted from one generation to the next as well as a primary medium through which other aspects of culture are transmitted and through which social relations are maintained. L2 learning may be part of second culture learning and adaptation, but the relationship of SLA to social and cultural learning differs greatly with circumstances.
In discussing linguistic and psychological perspectives on SLA, I have for the most part used “second language learning” in the inclusive sense of adding another language to one’s first (or native) language, but it is important at this point to return to the distinction among second language (SL) learning, foreign language (FL) learning, and auxiliary language (A L) learning which was mentioned in Chapter 2. This is relevant to differential considerations not only of what is being learned in the process of SLA from social perspectives, but also of how it is being learned, and of why some learners are more successful than others.
What we are here distinguishing as an SL is generally learned and used within the context of a language community which dominantly includes members who speak it natively; it is needed to participate in that community socially, academically, politically, and economically. Examples of SL learners would include Spanish speakers in the USA learning English, Turkish speakers in Germany learning German, or Koreans in China learning Chinese. Communicative competence in an SL thus often requires considerable knowledge of the larger community’s culture and social structure, although learners may be selective in deciding which elements they want to adopt as part of their own identity. In contrast, students learning an FL usually do so within the context of their own native culture, often have little opportunity to interact with members of the language community who speak the FL natively (unless they study abroad), and typically have little opportunity (or need) to participate fully in the FL society – indeed, too often the sole reason for studying the language is that it is required for graduation. An A L is learned in a context where it will function for political or technological purposes, and when its use will generally be limited to these social domains; to the extent an AL is required at all for face-to-face interaction, it is likely to be used in linguistically diverse settings which require participants to make use of a common language code for a restricted range of social functions. Examples might include use of English by a Thai speaker for international trade, an Igbo speaker in Nigeria for national-level political meetings, or a Chinese speaker for pan-Asian economic conferences.
Within the definition of communicative competence, then, the content of “what a speaker needs to know,” as well as judgments of relative success in attaining that knowledge, depend on the social context within which he or she learns and is using the language.
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