competence (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTIC theory, and especially in GENERATIVE GRAMMAR, to refer to speakers’ knowledge of their language, the SYSTEM of RULES which they have mastered so that they are able to produce and understand an indefinite number of SENTENCES, and to recognize grammatical mistakes and AMBIGUITIES. It is an idealized conception of language, which is seen as in opposition to the notion of PERFORMANCE, the specific UTTERANCES of speech; the SAUSSUREAN distinction between LANGUE and PAROLE is similar, but there are important differences between the definitions of competence and langue. According to Noam Chomsky, linguistics before generative grammar had been preoccupied with performance in a CORPUS, instead of with the UNDERLYING competence involved. As a general conception, this distinction has been widely accepted, but there has been criticism from linguists who feel that the boundary between the two notions is not as clear-cut as their definitions would lead one to believe. There are problems, often, in deciding whether a particular speech feature is a matter of competence or performance (e.g. a feature of INTONATION, or DISCOURSE).

A particularly strong line of criticism emerged in the notion of communicative competence, which focuses on the NATIVE-SPEAKERS’ ability to produce and understand sentences which are appropriate to the CONTEXT in which they occur – what speakers need to know in order to communicate effectively in socially distinct settings. Communicative competence, then, subsumes the social determinants of linguistic behavior, including such environmental matters as the relationship between speaker and hearer, and the pressures which stem from the time and place of speaking. If speakers have a tacit awareness of such communicative CONSTRAINTS, it is argued, then a linguistic theory ought to aim to provide an explicit account of these factors, in so far as these are systematic within a community, and not restrict itself to the analysis of STRUCTURE in purely FORMAL terms (as in the notion of ‘linguistic’ competence). This view has received a wide measure of acceptance, but to date relatively little progress has been made over the question of how to model this broader conception of competence in precise terms. More recently, an analogous notion of pragmatic competence has been proposed.