Communicative competence

and cross-cultural pragmatic

issues
Communicative competence

 „An aspect of our competence that

enables us to convey and interpret
messages and to negotiate meaning
interpersonally within specific contexts”
(Dell Hymes , 1967)
Canale & Swain (1980)

 Grammatical competence
 Discourse competence
 Sociolinguistic competence
 Strategic competence
Bachman, 1990

Language competence

Organisational Pragmatic

Grammatical Textual llocutionary Sociolinguistic

- Vocab. - Cohesion - Ideational - Dialect
- Morphology - Rhetoric - Manipulative - Register
- Syntax - Heuristic - Naturalness
- Phonology - Imaginative - Cultural
/Graphology references
& figures of
speech
Celce-Murcia (2008)
SOCIOCULTURAL
COMPETENCE:
Intercultural
awareness

GRAMMATICAL TEXTUAL- FORMULAIC

COMPETENCE COMPETENCE COMPETENCE

STRATEGIC INTERACTIONAL
COMPETENCE COMPETENCE
Learning Illocutions
Communication Conversation
Non-verbal
(real life ex-s of improper communicative competence
realization)
Tokyo Hotel:
 You are invited to take advantage of the
chambermaid.
 Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please.  If
you are not person to do such thing please
not to read notice.
 Ladies are requested not to have children
in the bar.
 Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.
 Special today - no ice cream.
 Order your summer suit. Because is big
rush we will execute customers in strict
rotation.
 Specialist in women and other diseases.
Pragmatic differences across cultures

Deborah Tannen

 level of indirectness tolerated

 paralinguistic signals of different speech acts

 different cultural expectations - stereotypes (the

pushy New Yorker, the stony American Indian,
the inscrutable Chinese)
Example 1:
TAKING THE FLOOR
Indian English (by raising
volume)
British English (by
repeating the introductory
phrase)
Example 2: ‘Thanksgiving dinner’ situation

A: In fact one of my students told me for the first time, I

taught her for over a year, that she was adopted. And
then I thought – uh – THAT explains SO many things.
B: What. That she was –
A: Cause she’s so different from her mother
B: .. smarter than she should have been? Or stupider than
she should’ve been.
A: It wasn’t smart or stupid, Actually, it was just she was so
different. Just different.
B: [hm]
Anna Wierzbicka

 Ethnocentric view of speech acts

 Cross-cultural differences in directness
Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit!
Will/Won’t/Would you sit down?
Please, have a little more! You must!
Would you like to have some more? How about a
beer?
What’s the time?
You wouldn’t happen to have the correct time,
would you?
Indirectness and politeness
You are to get off. Not to show oneself to
me here!
Why don’t you bloody get off? Get off, will
you.
Underlying beliefs
individualism
collectivism
„compromise”
 Michael Clyne
 Should you not make your utterance more informative
than required? (How are you?)
 Should you always be truthful? (I’m fine thanks)
 Should you always be relevant and straightforward?