Language and Communication

Jack C. Richards, R.W. Schmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138156708
• eBook ISBN: 9781317869627
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Presents eight specially written chapters which provide a coherent survey of major issues in the study of language and communication, and which show how these are related to questions of practical concern in the learning and teaching of second and foreign languages. The issues discussed have been selected primarily for their relevance to applied linguistics, and there is a unifying interest in how language reflects the communicative functions it performs as well as in the process involved in using language for communication. Each chapter presents a self-contained survey of a central issue, is prefaced by an introduction linking the different perspectives, and is followed by discussion questions to aid effective use of the text in applied linguistics courses.

1	From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy^1
	Michael Canale

Introduction

Since its introduction by Hymes in the mid-1960s, the term ‘communicative competence’ has enjoyed increasing popularity among teachers, researchers and others interested in language. In the field of second (and foreign) language pedagogy, this general interest in language for communication is viewed as a promising departure from the narrower and still popular focus on language as grammar. However, there is reason for concern about the less healthy status Hymes’ term has acquired as a buzzword within applied linguistics and especially about the sometimes fashionable exchange of opinions on this topic that Groot (1975, p. 57) has accurately noted.

The reasons for concern are not only that there remains much disagreement and little careful research on the applications of communicative competence in second language pedagogy. Rather within applied linguistics one also finds both confusion and lack of consideration of many of the basic concepts involved in this notion. The view here is that the current disarray in conceptualization, research and application in the area of communicative language pedagogy results in large part from failure to consider and develop an adequate theoretical framework.

In a recent report (Canale and Swain 1980), the above concerns were addressed in the form of a theoretical position paper. Our purposes there were: (a) to examine carefully the assumptions, content, empirical status and pedagogical implications of current theories of communicative competence; (b) to provide a theoretical framework for this notion that is explicit, adequate and justifiable; and (c) to explore the implications of this theoretical framework for further research and for teaching and testing in general second language programmes at the initial stages of second language study.

This chapter re-examines this earlier position on communicative competence. It is based on work carried out at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) over the past two years on the design and implementation of a communicative testing programme for students in general French as a second language programmes in elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. It first presents a slightly revised theoretical framework for communicative competence (Section 1) and then addresses the relevance of this framework for teaching and testing purposes (Section 2, Appendix A and the questions following this chapter). Throughout, an effort is made to relate the views and work reported here to other current research on communicative competence and to point out important problems remaining in theory and practice. The chapter ends with a few summary comments and concluding remarks on research directions.

1 Theoretical framework

The essential aspects of the theoretical framework presented here concern the nature of communication, the distinction between communicative competence and actual communication, and the main components of communicative competence.

1.1 The nature of communication

Following Breen and Candlin (1980), Morrow (1977) and Widdowson (1978), communication is understood here to have the following characteristics: it

(a)	is a form of social interaction, and is therefore normally acquired and used in social interaction;
(b)	involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message;
(c)	takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate language use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances;
(d)	is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints, fatigue and distractions;
(e)	always has a purpose (for example, to establish social relations, to persuade, or to promise);
(f)	involves authentic, as opposed to textbook-contrived language; and
(g)	is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes. (For example, communication could be judged successful in the case of a non-native English speaker who was trying to find the train station in Toronto, uttered ‘How to go train’ to a passer-by, and was given directions to the train station.)

In addition, communication is understood in the present chapter as the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes. Information is assumed to consist of conceptual, sociocultural, affective and other content as discussed in Bateson and Ruesch (1951), Haley (1963), Hymes (1972b) and elsewhere. Furthermore, as pointed out by Haley (1963) and others, such information is never permanently worked out nor fixed but is constantly changing and qualified by such factors as further information, context of communication, choice of language forms, and non-verbal behaviour. In this sense communication involves the continuous evaluation and negotiation of meaning on the part of the participants, as described by Candlin (1980), Wells (1981) and others. Finally, it is assumed with Palmer (1978) that authentic communication involves a ‘reduction of uncertainty’ on behalf of the participants; for example, a speaker asking a (non-rhetorical) question will be uncertain as to the answer but this uncertainty will be reduced when an answer is provided. Note that although such uncertainty can be reduced at a given level of information, it does not seem likely that uncertainty can be eliminated at all levels in any authentic communication. One may speculate that ease of communication increases to the extent that uncertainty is reduced at all levels of information.

Of course this characterization of the nature of communication is not exhaustive: it reflects an interest in second language pedagogy and is intended as the minimal characterization adequate for the research programme at OISE on evaluating the communicative performance of (beginning) students in general second language programmes in Ontario. More comprehensive characterizations of communication may be found in Hinofotis (1981a), Wallat (1981), Wiemann and Backlund (1980) and references cited in these works, for example. It is important to signal that although communication is the focus of the work reported on in the present chapter, I in no way regard communication as the essential purpose of language nor the only purpose relevant for second language pedagogy; for further comment see Canale (1981b), Canale and Swain (1980), Chomsky (1975), Halliday (1978), and Jakobson (1960).

1.2 Communicative competence and actual communication

The distinction between communicative competence and actual communication remains poorly understood and, somewhat surprisingly, or marginal interest in the second language field. Canale and Swain (1980, pp. 3–8) discuss this topic in detail. Here the purpose is to clarify these notions further; in section 2.1 their relevance for communicative language pedagogy is re-emphasized.

In Canale and Swain (1980) communicative competence was understood as the underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication (e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and skill in using the sociolinguistic conventions for a given language). Furthermore, a distinction was drawn between communicative competence and what is here labelled actual communication – the realization of such knowledge and skill under limiting psychological and environmental conditions such as memory and perceptual constraints, fatigue, nervousness, distractions and interfering background noises. The term ‘actual communication’ is preferred here since the earlier term ‘performance’ (or ‘communicative performance’) used by Canale and Swain (1980) and others has been a source of much confusion in applied linguistics since Chomsky (1965, p. 4) introduced the strong and weak senses of the terms ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ into modern linguistics. Regardless of the terminological shift, the view in Canale and Swain (1980), rephrased here, is that communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication but is reflected only indirectly, and sometimes imperfectly (e.g. in random and inadvertent slips of the tongue, mixing of registers) due to general limiting conditions such as those mentioned above.

It is important to stress again (see Canale and Swain 1980, p. 34) that communicative competence refers to both knowledge and skill in using this knowledge when interacting in actual communication. Knowledge refers here to what one knows (consciously and unconsciously) about the language and about other aspects of communicative language use; skill refers to how well one can perform this knowledge in actual communication. Although the general distinction between knowledge and skill is easily drawn and largely accepted (cf. Chomsky 1980; Olson 1973; Ryle 1949), precise definitions of knowledge and skill remain elusive and controversial. The relation of this distinction to the one between communicative competence and actual communication is also a source of disagreement and possible confusion. For example, there is a tendency (e.g. Kempson 1977, pp. 54–55) to treat skill in communicating as part of a theory of actual communication (in her terms, a theory of performance) and not as part of a theory of competence. In contrast Wiemann and Backlund (1980) seek to incorporate this notion of skill into a theory of communicative competence but choose a perplexing route: Thus, unlike the linguistic view of competence and performance, the communication view considers performance as part of competence – not as a separate concept’ (p. 188).

Again, the view here is that both knowledge and skill underlie actual communication in a systematic and necessary way, and are thus included in communicative competence. Furthermore, this view is not only consistent with the distinction between communicative competence and actual communication but depends crucially on it; in particular, this notion of skill – how well one can perform knowledge in actual situations – requires a distinction between underlying capacities (competence) and their manifestation in concrete situat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy
• 2. The domain of pragmatics
• 3. Rules of speaking
• 4. The structure of teachers’ directives
• 5. Conversational analysis
• 6. Face in interethnic communication
• 7. Two puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency
• 8. Monitoring and the second language learner
• Bibliography
• Index