TEMA 4

THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND ITS COMPONENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

The aim of this unit is to offer a broad account of the concept of communicative competence, and its
importance in society, and especially, in the language teaching community, from its origins to present-day
studies.

2. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

2.1. THE NOTION OF COMMUNICATION

From an anthropological perspective, the origins of communication are to be found in the very early stages of
life when there was a need for animals and humans to communicate basic structures of the world and everyday
life. Before language was developed, non-verbal codes were used by humans to convey information by means
of symbols, body gestures, and sounds, as it is represented in pictorial art and burial sites. However, since
prehistoric times the way of improving communication preoccupied human beings as they had a need to
express their thoughts with words. This non-verbal code was to be developed into a highly elaborated
signalling system, both spoken and written, which became an essential tool of communication for human
beings.

Regarding types (Halliday 1985), the field of semiotics distinguishes verbal and non-verbal communication as
part of the analysis of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs as communicative devices in all modes and
contexts. Thus, when the act of communication is verbal, the code is the language, which may result in oral or
written form, as when we are watching a film, having a conversation, or reading a magazine. When we refer to
non-verbal communication, visual and tactile modes are concerned, such as gestures, facial expressions, body
language, or touch, and even some uses of the vocal tract are possible by means of paralanguage, such as
whistling or musical effects. According to Halliday (1975), language may be defined as an instrument of
social interaction with a clear communicative purpose.

2.2. A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE SYSTEM

Within a language teaching theory, many approaches and theories stem from a fundamental question which
addresses the way we, teachers, can help students who are learning a second language in a classroom setting,
become proficient in that language. Following Ellis (1985), we may define proficiency as the learner’s
knowledge of the target language viewed as linguistic competence or communicative competence.

In the 1970s and 1980s, an approach to foreign and second language teaching emerged both in Europe and
North America focusing on the work of anthropologists, sociologists, and sociolinguists. It concentrated on
language as social behaviour, seeing the primary goal of language teaching as the development of the learner's
communicative competence. Scholars such as Hymes (1972), Halliday (1970), Canale and Swain (1980) or
Chomsky (1957) leveled their contributions and criticisms at structural linguistic theories claiming for more
communicative approaches on language teaching.

Among the most relevant features that Communicative Language Teaching claimed for, we will highlight a
set of principles that provide a broad overview of this method.

- The first principle claims for students to learn a language through using it to communicate.
- Secondly, there is an emphasis on authentic and meaningful communication which should be the goal
of classroom activities.
- Thirdly, fluency is seen as an important dimension of communication.
- Fourth, communication is intended to involve the integration of different language skills
- Finally, learning is a process of creative construction which involves trial and error.

2.3. EARLIER APPROACHES

The notion of communicative competence and its development is linked to the dialectical relationship between
language and culture which has preoccupied linguists, philosophers and researchers for many years. However,
it was not until the early twentieth century that a systematic introduction of cultural studies enters the second
language teaching curriculum, and for the first time, traditional views on language system are challenged.

One of the first references to language, as a system of signs, and the necessity of an appropriate context of
communication was provided by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in 1651. He explains how fallacious it is to
judge of the nature of things by the ordinary and inconstant use of words and makes reference to an emphasis
on social action rather than on texts in order to achieve the effectiveness of communication. Some centuries
later, in 1921, Shweiter and Simonet also challenged the view that language is only a system of signs and that
language awareness included only the knowledge of grammar, lexicon, and phonetics (Bloomfield 1933).
They argued about the necessity of including a system of basic information into second language teaching,
which involved a wide range of general topics, among which we may find geography, history customs,
traditions, holidays and rituals of a foreign language country.

Another approach traces back to the middle of the twentieth century, when the American linguist Robert Lado
(1957) argued that knowledge of a foreign language culture is essential for foreign language learners to create
the same atmosphere of native speakers’ interaction. However, Lado’s method was not to be applied to a
classroom setting as audiolingual and grammar translation methods were the dominant approaches in second
language teaching by that time. Therefore, his theoretical discoveries were not to be considered again until the
1970s, when social sciences started to emerge as a relevant issue within the field of language teaching.
Parallel to these theoretical challenges, we find our next linguist under consideration, Noam Chomsky, who
also challenged, but this time successfully, behaviourist models of language learning.

3. CHOMSKY’S THEORY

Chomsky proposed a theory called Transformational Generative Grammar, according to which learners do not
acquire an endless list of rules, but limited set of transformations with which language users can form an
unlimited number of sentences.
Chomsky’s theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech
community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions
as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in
applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.

For him, then, there are two main concepts under revision, competence and performance. To him, competence
refers to the innate knowledge of language an ideal speaker/listener has in an homogeneous speech
community, and performance refers to the actual production and rules of language use. According to
Chomsky, then, within his theory of linguistic competence and performance, being respectively,
grammaticality and acceptability, linguistic knowledge is separated from sociocultural features. His distinction
served as basis for work of many other researchers as it is stated in the following sections.

4. FIRST REACTIONS TO CHOMKSKY’S MODEL

Mainly three approaches showed a disagreement that went on in the early 1970s, and centered on whether
communicative competence included grammatical competence or not. Thus, Campbell and Wales (1970),
Halliday (1972), and Hymes (1972). They thought that there were rules of language use that were neglected in
Chomsky’s view of language, and that linguistic competence represented only part of what one needs to know
to be a competent language user.

With respect to Campbell and Wales’ approach, they accepted the distinction proposed by Chomsky regarding
competence and performance, but pointed out that Chomsky neglected the appropriateness of utterance to a
particular context of situation or, in other words, its sociocultural significance. Therefore, they referred to
Chomsky’s view as grammatical competence and to theirs as communicative competence. For them, the idea
of communicative competence was the ability to produce utterances which are not so much grammatical but,
more important, appropriate to the context in which they are made (1970).

In relation to Halliday (1972), we shall mention that he rejected Chomsky’s dichotomy of competence and
performance as he thought the potential of meaning was covered both by knowing and doing. To Halliday,
language is a mode of human behaviour, and therefore, a mode of social interaction. Besides, he proposed the
notion of language functions by means of which the context of a situation provides a first approximation to the
specification of the components of the communication situation (1985).

Regarding Dell Hymes’ approach, he also pointed out that Chomsky’s competence-performance model did
not provide an explicit place for sociocultural features. Hymes introduced the concept of communicative
competence, paying special attention to the sociolinguistic component, which connected language and culture.
Hymes (1972) stated that native speakers know more than just grammatical competence. So far, he expands
the Chomskyan notions of grammaticality (competence) and acceptability (performance) into four parameters
subsumed under the heading of communicative competence as something which is first, formally possible;
secondly, feasible in virtue of the available means; thirdly, appropriate, in relation to a context in which it is
used and evaluated; and finally, something which is in fact done, and actually performed.

5. EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND ITS ELEMENTS

 5.1. CANALE AND SWAIM’S THEORY

The notion of communicative competence was examined by various groups of researchers, including those in
second language learning like Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983). As they say, 'it is common to find
the term "communicative competence" used to refer exclusively to knowledge or capability relating to the
rules of language use and the term "grammatical (or linguistic) competence" used to refer to the rules of
grammar'. However, they maintain that just as there are rules of grammar that would be useless without rules
of language use, so there are also rules of language use that would be useless without rules of grammar.
Hence, they see communicative competence as consisting of grammatical competence plus sociolinguistic
competence.

5.1.1. DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATION

1. It is a form of social interaction and is therefore acquired and used in social interaction.
2. It involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message.
3. It takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate
language use and also clues to correct interpretations of utterances.
4. It is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints, fatigue
and other distractions.
5. It always has a purpose.
6. It involves authentic language.
7. It is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes.

5.1.2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND ITS COMPONENTS

 Grammatical competence, which deals with the mastery of the linguistic code itself. This aspect is
important for students to attain a higher level of proficiency where accuracy is important.
 Sociolinguistic competence is concerned with the appropriate use of language in particular social
situations to convey specific communicative functions such as describing, narrating, or eliciting
among others, including the participants and the rules for interaction. This competence is particularly
difficult to attain as the skilled use of appropriate registers requires sensitivity to cross-cultural
differences.
 Discourse competence concerns the mastery of how to use language in order to achieve a unified
spoken or written text in different genres, that is, cohesion and coherence of utterances in a discourse.
This cohesion of thought is attained by means of cohesive devices, such as pronouns and grammatical
connectors, together with a unity of thought and continuity in a text.
 Strategic competence makes reference to the mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication
strategies by means of both the underlying knowledge about language and communicative language
use or skill. The main goal to attain with this competence is first, to compensate for breakdowns in
communication, and secondly, to enhance the effectiveness of communication.

5.2. SANDRA SAVIGNON

Regarding the scope of communicative competence, Savignon’s experiment is considered to be one of the
best-known surveys as it shed light on the development of research in this field. She introduced the idea of
communicative competence as the ability to function in a truly communicative setting - that is, in a dynamic
exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the toal informational input, both linguistic and
paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors (1972). She included the use of gestures and facial expression in
her interpretation and later refined her definition of communicative competence to comprise of the following
six relevant aspects (1983).

Thus, the first feature is the individuals’s willingness to take risks and express themselves in foreign language
and to make themselves understood, that is, the notion of the negotiation of meaning. Secondly, the fact that
communicative competence is not only oral, but written too. Thirdly, an approach to appropriateness as
depending on context. Here we refer to the appropriate choices of register and style in terms of situation and
other participants. Fourthly, she states that only performance is observable as it is only through performance
that competence can be developed, maintained, and evaluated. In the fifth place, she claims for
communicative competence to be relative, and not absolute, as it comes in degrees because it depends on the
cooperation of all interlocutors. These degrees are difficult to measure.

6. MEC THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND ITS ELEMENTS

Our main aim when teaching a foreign language is the acquisition of communicative competence. This
communicative competence has been analysed following Canale’s classification and the one made by The
Council of Europe when establishing the Common European Framework of Reference for languages. Thus,
the common contents for Statutory Secondary Education and Bachillerato respectively see communicative
competence as comprising four subcompetences:

 Linguistic competence (including semantic, syntactic and phonological elements).

 Pragmatic or discourse competence (functions, speech acts, interactions...).
 Sociolinguistic competence (social conventions, communicative intentions, registers...).
 Strategic competence (the ability to adjust in the course of communication).

Sociocultural competence no longer appears as a separate element but it blends together with sociolinguistic
aspects as it can be seen in the new organisation of contents in three blocks: Communicative skills, reflections
upon language and sociocultural aspects.

Following the Common European Framework for languages, the Ministry states that to progressively develop
communicative competence in a given language, the student must be able to carry out a series of
communicative tasks. Communicative tasks are sets of actions that have a specific aim within a specific field.
In order to carry them out, communicative competence is activated; various strategies as well as linguistic and
discourse skills are used in context. As a consequence, the activities in which the foreign language is used can
be classified in fields: public (everything related to everyday social interaction), personal (family relations and
individual social practice) and those related to work and education.

To conclude, we want to say, quoting the curriculum for foreign languages, that learning foreign languages
shall contribute to the students’ training from a global perspective that favours the development of his/her
personality, positive social attitudes, access to interesting data... It shall also promote the knowledge of other
ways of life and social organisation different to our own, increase their information sources and enable them
to establish relations characterised by social and cultural tolerance in a world where international
communication plays an essential role.