Communicative Competence

2.
Communicative competence (Hymes’ model; Canale and Swaine’s model; communicative

approach to English language teaching)
a) Linguistic competence
- Chomsky’s idea: the human capacity for language, as illustrated by a child’s acquisition of
the language around them, is not the product of general intelligence or learning ability, but an
innate, genetically determined feature of the human species  we are born with a
considerable pre-programmed knowledge of how language works and require only minimal
exposure to activate our connection to the particular language around us  a newborn’s brain
contains a Universal Grammar (UG)  linguistic competence
- if we accept Chomsky’s idea, then language becomes more an object of biological

background and less social
- in this interpretation, similarities between language are more important and so outweigh the
differences
- this also means that language in itself is separated from other parts of communication such
as body language, intonation, or cultural knowledge  Chomsky’s theories have a reductive
and constraining effect, excluding other factors of communication
b) Communicative competence
- communicative competence as described by Dell-Hymes in the 1960s (contrastive to

Chomsky): a person, who had only linguistic competence would be quite unable to
communicate. Even though they could produce grammatical sentences, it would be likely that
they would unconnected to the social situation in which they occur.  Hymes suggests the
there are four types of knowledge needed for successful communication: possibility,
feasibility, appropriateness, and attestedness.
 possibility: what is formally possible in a language, i.e. whether an instance conforms

to the rules of grammar and pronunciation  Me going sleep now is not possible, but
I am going to sleep now is.
 feasibility: this is a psychological concept concerned with limitations to what can be
processed by the mind.  the rules of English allow for noun phrases to be expanded.
o The cheese was green.
o The cheese the rat ate was green.
o The cheese the rat the cat chased ate was green.
o The cheese the rat the cat the dog saw chased ate was green.
o The cheese the rat the cat the dog the man beat saw chased ate was green.
 the last two sentences do not really work in communication because they
are hard to comprehend. They are not ungrammatical, but are hard to process.
 appropriateness: conformity to social convention  controversial.
o non-verbal communication: Important factors are the degree to which some
values are perceived to be absolute rather than culture specific, for example,
religious freedom, female modesty, and women’s rights, the degree to which a
society should respect ethnic difference among its members; and the degree to
which visitors should conform to the etiquette of their hosts.
o verbal communication: language creates our identities, so when speaking a
foreign language do we keep our own identity or should we conform to the
given language’s norms? Should, for instance, an Islamic speaker drop all
references to Allah in their speech and use God instead?
 attestedness: whether…something is done. eg.: chips and fish  it is possible (not
ungrammatical), feasible (it is easily processed and understandable), appropriate (it
does not contravene any sensitive social convention).  still it does not really appear
in language in this form.  solution now: corpus linguistics (computerized techniques
for searching large databanks, if something occurs in language)
c) Communicative approach
- communicative approach to English language teaching  aims to develop learners’ capacity

to use the language efficiently
- tendency to neglect possibility (old-fashioned); and feasibility and attestedness (difficult to

grasp) and focus mainly on appropriateness  resulted in distortion.
- the potential for other cultures to have an impact on English, or for learners to develop
separate identities within it, was neglected.  ironic: the concept of communicative
competence does not assume that knowledge necessarily leads to conformity.
- concept of communicative competence shows how theories and rules may easily become
simplified in real life. however, it remains extremely powerful in language teaching.
- communicative competence includes three main competencies: grammatical competence,

sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence.  Canale and Swain’s theory of
communicative competence (alternative model to that of Hymes)
 grammatical competence: knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology,

syntax, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology.
 sociolinguistics competence:
o sociocultural rules of use: specifies ways in which certain propositions
and communicative functions are appropriate within a given
sociocultural context depending on contextual factors such as topic,
role of participants, setting and norms of interaction, as well as
appropriate attitude , register or style
o rules of discourse: combination of utterances and communicative
functions and not the grammatical well-formedness of a single
utterance nor the sociocultural appropriateness of a set of propositions
and communicative functions in a given context
 strategic competence: verbal and non-verbal communication strategies called
into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to
performance variables or to insufficient competence.

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2.

Communicative competence (Hymes’ model; Canale and Swaine’s model; communicative

- if we accept Chomsky’s idea, then language becomes more an object of biological

- communicative competence as described by Dell-Hymes in the 1960s (contrastive to

 possibility: what is formally possible in a language, i.e. whether an instance conforms

- communicative approach to English language teaching  aims to develop learners’ capacity

- tendency to neglect possibility (old-fashioned); and feasibility and attestedness (difficult to

- communicative competence includes three main competencies: grammatical competence,

 grammatical competence: knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology,

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