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4. Communicative competence. Analysis of its components. - Coggle Diagram
4. Communicative competence. Analysis of its components.
Communicative competence
Dell Hymes, 1970. Popularity. SLT: lang for communication, promising to abandon lang as a grammatical study.
Linguistic approach
1957: Noam Chomsky:
Syntactic Structures
: turning point. Transformational-generative grammar, departed from Structuralist and behaviorist. They failed to see difference deep vs surface (grammatical structure).
John is eager to please vs John is easy to please
Earlier studies: all native-speaker utterances are correct. Chomsky disagreed. Natives sometimes make mistakes. Distinction between: knowledge and use
Competence: unconscious knowledge of system and rules of the lang to understand and produce well-formed sentences. Mental.
Perfomance: actual use of the lang as a means of communication. Observable. Competence through performance.
Chomsky only linguistic aspect. Failed to consider social dimension. Lang does not occur in isolation
Knowledge of system: basis of comm, does not guarantee. Idealised speaker-hearer not characteristics of performance: memory limitations, hesitations, repetitions, etc.
Criticized that he worked with competence. Performance not worth studying because of chaotic nature (students must master it)
Others attacked: concept of native speaker competence poorly defined. No idealised hearer-speaker.
Compentece-performance only works if you ignore lang actually used. Widdowson: use (what is said) vs usage (lang that conforms to formal rules). Learning a lang: not just knowing rules, but how to use them in comm
New attempts to make up for lacks in Chomsky's studies: Searle, Halliday, Lakoff. Dell Hymes: comm comp
Sociological approach
Dell Hymes: comm comp. Speakers more than ling comp, know how lang is used by members of a speech community. What to say, to whom, when and how.
Replaced Chomsky's ling comp with comm comp. Competence vs performance: underlying (overall linguistic knowledge) vs actual (use).
Native speaker's knowledge 4 categories: systematic potential, appropriate, feasibility, occurrence.
Variables: setting, participants, purpose, channel, topic.
Comm comp: ability to use, produce and understand sentences appropriate to the social context. Linguistic and pragmatic features.
Linguistic aspects
: to have functional knowledge of elements and structures of the language
Phonological competence: sounds
Grammatical competence: grammatical structures, use them (linguistic competence)
Lexical competence: words
Discourse competence: texts of different genres, coherence
Pragmatic aspects
: how language is used in communicative situations to achieve speakers' purposes
Sociolinguistic competence: interpret social meaning, use lang with appropriate social meaning
Interactional competence: know and use rules for interaction, initiate and manage conversations, negotiate meaning
Functional competence: achieve communication purposes
Cultural competence: understand behaviour, behave
Hymes's model of lang: sociolinguistic, explaining lang use in social context. Competent: grammatical, sociocultural, psycholinguistic, factual knowledge, ability to use it. Teachers more than supply learners with structures.
Theoretical approach
1980, Canale & Swain: study comm comp. Pedagogical implications. New theoretical framework
Grammatical competence
: Chomsky's linguistic competence, Saussure's langue, Hymes's ling comp. Mastery of linguistic code. Knowledge and skills to express the literal meaning of utterances. L2 classes.
Discoruse competence
: use different types of discourse, organise them based on situations, interlocutors. Grammatical comp, connects sentences. Coherence + cohesion.
Strategic competence
: mastery of verbal and non-verbal comm strategies to compensate for: momentarily inability to recall the form, to compensate for lack of competence. Below and above conscious awareness, grammatical, discourse and sociolinguistic problems.
Sociolinguistic competence
: understanding of social context, what extent utterances appropriate in a context. Status, formality, roles, purposes, social conventions.
Appropriateness of meaning: communicative functions, attitudes, ideas proper
Appropriateness of form: meaning presented in verbal/non-verbal, appropriate
More studies on comm comp: Richards and Rogers, Bachman, Taylor... delve into previos ideas.
Hymes: father of comm comp. Chomsky: stir in world of linguistics. Still arouses interest.
Study of comm: basis of comm comp. Remember: comm not only apply general rules, know what to say. Teachers: integrate 4 competences