MARGIE BERNS
The notion of communicative competence has proven indispensable to world Englishes (WE) studies because of its attention to the role of sociocultural appropriateness in determining communicative success and effectiveness. This issue is highly relevant in the context of multiple and diverse settings of the learning and use of English and the attendant nativization of the linguistic code. As each setting is shaped by local cultural and social values, local norms of use develop consistently with these values, norms that specify what, when, where, how, and to whom something can be expressed at all linguistic levels from the phonological to the pragmatic. The determination of what is or is not “normal” cannot be made without accounting for local norms of the users of English in a particular sociocultural setting.
Communicative competence is a well‐established sociolinguistic construct in explorations of the interrelationships between and among language, society, and culture. It has been elaborated within the American linguistic tradition of anthropological linguistics, as represented by Dell Hymes (1962, 1972) and his ethnography of communication, and the British tradition of linguistics, as represented by Michael Halliday (1978) and his systemic‐functional paradigm. These contributions, although distinctive, are complementary and inform the use of communicative competence as a theoretical construct in WE studies.
Although Hymes is generally credited with introducing communicative competence as a construct to explain the social dimension of language in the 1970s, J. R. Firth had stressed the importance of the context of situation for understanding why language is used as it is some 40 years prior to that. Founder of the British school of linguistics, Firth held that “a piece of speech, a normal complete act of speech is a pattern of group behavior in which two or more persons participate by means of common verbalizations of the common situational context, and of the experiential contexts of the participants” (Firth 1930: 173). Firth’s interpretation of context of situation – which can be as broad as a speech community, a speech fellowship, or as narrow as an interpersonal interaction – provides a theoretical orientation for describing the communicative competence of each speaker that has evolved in non‐native settings. This concept is essential to an understanding of communicative competence in general because it leads to an appreciation of communicative competence in specific. That is, only through inclusion of context of situation as a parameter for determining what communicative competence means can the pluralistic nature of a language and the independent existence and the dynamic creative processes of nonnative varieties come into focus. It is this formulation of the social and cultural bases of communication that influenced Hymes as well as Halliday, and that accounts for their parallel interests in the making of meaning through language.
The notion communicative competence itself as it is generally understood in linguistics comes from Hymes, who saw it as the knowledge of sociolinguistic rules that is separate from the knowledge of grammatical rules. The necessity of this notion came about in response to his recognition that competence in a language is more than the ability to create and construct grammatically correct sentences. Rather, given his interest in the sociocultural dimensions of communication, the term entails knowledge of how to use language appropriately in ways that are deemed acceptable by members of the speech community. Communicative competence is what users of a language draw upon, and it is the context – cultural as well as social – that influences features of linguistic expression from the phonological to the pragmatic level.
One of Hymes’ concerns was the integration of linguistic theory (dominated by Noam Chomsky’s generative linguistics at the time) into a more general theory of communication and culture: “social life shapes communicative competence and does so from infancy onward. Depending on gender, family, community and religion, children are raised in terms of one configuration of the use and meaning of language rather than another” (Hymes 1980: vi). Enculturation into a group provides the members of that group a set of linguistic and cultural resources for communication with one another.
Halliday brings the focus onto the role of the social context and the options it presents to language users for “doing things with language,” that is, using language to express communicative functions. The various options a particular context offers he calls meaning potential, which comprises the choices (phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) that language users have available to them when interacting through language. This meaning potential “is inherent in the social system as it is interpreted by the members of this or that subculture” (Halliday 1978: 90). Thus, a culture’s meaning potential has the same origins as a speech community’s communicative competence: the social and cultural context in which users of the language exploit their linguistic system to express, interpret, and negotiate meaning between and among themselves.
While Hymes and Halliday were developing their theories of appropriateness and meaning‐making in language, Braj Kachru (1976, 1977, 1981) was making the case for recognition of a socially realistic linguistics to shape the study of the growing use and nativization of English and demand for English instruction around the world. His focus at that time was Outer Circle contexts because of an as yet unchallenged Anglocentric interpretation of standard, norm, and model that prevailed among Inner Circle linguists and language specialists. Kachru’s argument focused on the need for a new research paradigm to explain the formal and functional variation observed in English as used in such contexts as India, Nigeria, or Singapore. Such a perspective would decenter the Inner Circle and its norms, standards, and models and shift the focus to the pluricentric realities (as opposed to a one‐standard‐fits‐all view) of Englishes – local, national, or international – and the communicative competences corresponding to the respective purposes, roles, and situations of each context.
Multiple norms for English use – whether spoken or written – as represented by differences in rhetorical and communicative styles problematize a view of communicative competence as a monolithic notion. Notions of acceptability, appropriateness, and intelligibility cannot be used independently of the context of situation in an Outer Circle situation any more than in an Inner Circle interaction. When an American and a New Zealander interact, phonological, semantic, or pragmatic variation can interfere with communicative success. Such interference is generally explained away by citing culturally related variation underlying the linguistic choices each person has made, and this variation is accepted as legitimate for the American and the New Zealander because they are the native users of their respective varieties. But such acceptance does not always obtain for Outer Circle and Expanding Circle users, whose differences are seen as mistakes or signs of so‐called fossilization. This interdependence of context and communicative competence can further be demonstrated in instances of cross‐cultural communication involving an Inner Circle representative from the US and an Outer Circle member from Zambia. The realization of a greeting may not necessarily convey the intended message when the meaning potential of the participants in the interaction is based on different semantic choices. Thus, the African participant selects from his options the greeting “I see you’ve put on weight,” which his culture tells him is the appropriate choice. Imagine his surprise when this greeting is met with indignation by the American, whose meaning potential does not offer the surface form of this utterance as an option when the intention is to express pleasure at seeing how well someone looks. The issue highlighted by such encounters is identification of the aspect of communicative competence leading to the misunderstanding: is it linguistic – rate of speech, choice of register, lexical items? Or is it cultural – pragmatic choices determined by the practices of the speech community? In this case it is the latter; behind the observable factors of linguistic form and socially acceptable behavior are the value systems, the social and cultural norms of the respective users.
Kachru drew on Firth, Hymes, and Halliday to interpret communicative competence for the task at hand – drawing attention to the validity of Outer Circle varieties on the basis of the realities of their social contexts. He takes Hymes’ formulation of communicative competence as sociolinguistic rules, which he relates to Firth’s “means of common verbalizations of the common situational context, and of the experiential contexts of the participants” (Firth 1930: 173). Context of situation – the social and cultural parameters relevant to the setting in which participants find themselves – is also taken from Firth. Kachru’s formulation of communicative competence integrates Halliday’s focus on the interpersonal function of language and a socially constructed meaning potential. Ultimately, communicative competence becomes a cornerstone in the theoretical foundation of the world Englishes paradigm.
The power of communicative competence in the WE framework has been demonstrated in debates concerning the identification of the rightful guardians of the English language: whose communicative competence is to be the reference point for evaluating whether or not a use of English, wherever written or spoken, is appropriate and acceptable? Is the legitimacy accorded native‐speaker variation (including linguistic creativity) available to the Englishes of nonnative speakers? Are the norms and communicative competence, of meaning potential of standard Inner Circle Englishes the only acceptable models for linguistic communication?
As stated above, Kachru was reacting to the position that the only acceptable model was that of the so‐called native speakers of either the so‐called General American or British (Received Pronunciation) English variety. At the time Kachru was introducing his case for the legitimacy of nonnative speaker models, two influential linguists were promoting the native speaker standard: Clifford Prator of the United States and Randolph Quirk of Great Britain.
Prator (1968) sparked the first of Kachru’s published challenges to the native‐speaker argument (Kachru 1976). For Prator, the English of all users in the Outer and Expanding Circles should be measured by Inner Circle standards and should conform to Inner Circle norms. This, he argued, would be essential in limiting the deviations in nonnative‐speaker English that he attributed to the incomplete and incorrect learning of English. Curtailing deviations from the native‐speaker norm would minimize “fossilization” (à la Selinker 1972) of forms and uses a native speaker finds unacceptable and inappropriate. Further, tolerating these deviations would lead, over time, to a total lack of intelligibility between native speakers and nonnative speakers. International mutual intelligibility, it was argued, can be ensured only when all learners of English pattern their English after that of a native speaker. Prator considered heretical the suggestion that a pluralistic, rather than a monomodel, monocultural, Anglocentric orientation might be more productive for understanding the forms and functions of English in contexts beyond the Inner Circle. He took particular exception to the “the idea that it is best, in a country where English is not spoken natively but is widely used as the medium of instruction, to set up the local variety of English as the ultimate model to be imitated by those learning the language” (Prator 1968: 459).
Quirk (1985, 1988, 1990) not only argued against nonnative norms, but championed a global standard for English, for a homogeneous Standard English. He supports this in claiming that “the relatively narrow range of purposes for which the non‐native needs to use English is arguably well catered for by a single monochrome standard form that looks as good on paper as it sounds in speech” (Quirk 1985: 6). The responsibility for maintaining respect for Standard (Inner Circle) English falls to its native speakers, since nonnative speakers do not have recourse to institutionalized standards and norms to legitimate any non‐standard variety (Quirk 1990). Like Prator, Quirk was concerned with use of English in the international domain. He maintains that English teaching in schools throughout the world should not cater for local purposes, but for purposes of global communication; that the pedagogical model should be the uniform competence shared among well‐educated speakers whose speech and writing are based on the homogeneous Standard English he espoused.
Such assumptions conflict with those underlying communicative competence, in particular in one aspect following Hymes: if social life shapes a person’s ability to use language appropriately, that is, if the context into which a child is born determines that child’s later communicative competence, and if there is more than one social setting in which appropriateness in using a language can be shaped, then the concept of communicative competence cannot be considered in monolithic or homogeneous and uniform terms. As English has, as a result of contact with different cultural and social systems, been adapted to the culture and social life of the English‐speaking communities in which it has come to function, the process of adaptation, or nativization, has been extended to notions of appropriateness and acceptability in form and function, to development of norms and standards, and to multiple communicative competences. In making this assessment based on the social reality of Outer Circle contexts, Kachru negates Prator’s and Quirk’s purist and prescriptivist claims, and links communicative competence with the choice of a variety as a standard, norm, and model through these questions: Acceptable to whom? Appropriate for whom? Intelligible to whom?
In the mid‐to‐late 1980s several studies, among the first to consider contexts outside the Inner Circle contexts from a world Englishes perspective, illustrated how different cultural settings of English language use are associated with distinct communicative competences. B. Kachru (1983) described the forms and functions of the English variety used in India as well as the historical context for its nativization. Lowenberg (1984) looked at the multilingual speech fellowships of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (which include English users) to describe the complexity of communicative competence in such contexts because it involves not only competence in distinct languages, their diverse styles, registers, and even dialects, but also the ability to mix and switch between and among them in appropriate and acceptable ways. Chishimba (1985) addressed the question of which features characterize the Africanness in indigenous varieties of English and illustrated how previous studies of English in Africa had consistently ignored the relevance of the context of situation to describe variation. Magura (1985), writing on South Africa and Zimbabwe, demonstrated that African varieties of English have developed meaning systems consistent with African sociocultural contexts and that it is local native norms which make African Englishes distinct. Berns (1990) looked at the Expanding Circle settings of Germany and Japan in order to describe forms and functions of English within each and explore the implications of these characteristics of their respective communicative competence for pedagogical models.
Later studies have explored recognition of pluricentric norms of communicative competence. Aspects covered include the relationship between communicative competence and culture for users of English in cross‐cultural interaction. Nelson (1992) and Berns (1995) ask whose culture and whose communicative competence is to be the frame of reference in these situations. Rhetorical and communicative styles as socially constructed norms have also been investigated. For example, studies by Y. Kachru (1997, 2001) on both conversational and textual discourse show how cultural values are conveyed through rhetorical strategies, determinants of acceptable content, and text structure that realize conventions of the local community and context in linguistic form.
Related is research on intelligibility, which, along with acceptability and appropriateness, is a means by which communicative competence is demonstrated. Key investigations here are those in Smith (1987, 1992) and Nelson (1984, 2001), who provide a nuanced interpretation of what is referred to as “understanding.” They identify three separate levels: intelligibility, or recognition of the word/utterance; comprehensibility or perception of the word/utterance (referential) meaning; and interpretability, apprehension of the intent, purpose, or meaning behind the word/utterance. This distinction among aspects of understanding is a valuable tool in world Englishes studies for analysis of misunderstandings in cross‐cultural interaction and description of differences in the participants’ knowledge of the rules of speaking that apply or, in Halliday’s terms, the meaning potential a speaker has available in any given context of situation. This broader interpretation of intelligibility plays a role in assessment of communicative competence in everyday use as well as in pedagogical contexts.
It is a given that the choice of a classroom model involves not only the linguistic features to be taught but the norms of use as well. If English is taught in contexts in which it is used for local, regional, or international communication, likely it would not make sense to teach a variety’s formal features independent of the respective pragmatic features. It is not a given, however, that local forms and norms are the right choice in Outer and Expanding Circle contexts. Negative attitudes toward usage and use differing from Inner Circle standards may prevent their adoption – among the users of the new variety as well as among Inner Circle gatekeepers. Generally, native‐speaker competence has been the uncontested goal for all learners, teachers and teaching materials. Learners are prepared for interaction through written and spoken texts with Inner Circle variety users regardless of the context of situation. Evidence that this situation is no longer adequate and that native‐speaker communicative competence may not be best suited as the goal in a given pedagogical setting is being challenged in classrooms around the world (see Savignon 2002a for illustrations).
Fears that English will diminish cultural and linguistic diversity because of its associations with British and/or American cultural and social values are founded in an ideology that links a language inextricably with a particular culture. Thus, English is tied to the Inner Circle varieties, most generally British and American. That a language can adapt, or better said, be adapted to its surroundings and express other identities conflicts with the monomodel view that obtains in many educational settings. Insistence on this model begs several questions. Although American and British varieties of English are acceptable within their respective contexts, are they appropriate as models elsewhere? Is it appropriate for schoolchildren in rural West Africa, for example, to learn a variety of English based on the communicative competence of American schoolchildren? Would this ensure that the learners will be mutually intelligible, comprehensible, and interpretable with other members of their own speech community? That they will be accepted as a member of their local speech community although they do not follow its norms – the very norms that are markers of group identity? A polymodel is responsive to the sociocultural dimensions of functional and formal diversity and as such provides a perspective on the questions of “which model?’ or “whose competence?’ It considers the diversity of the social and cultural context in which the learners will be using the language as fundamental to any informed and realistic choice of a classroom model.
The case of English in China is illustrative. Over the past 20 years or so Chinese educators and scholars have been making the case for recognition of China English (He & Li 2009; He & Zhang 2010; Bolton & Graddol 2012). This variety is described as neither Chinglish nor Chinese English, both of which have negative connotations because they represent “bad” English replete with grammatical mistakes that lead to nonsensical messages. China English is being promoted as the variety suitable for all learners. It “has the standard Englishes as its core but is colored with characteristic features of Chinese”; it “is particularly suited for expressing content ideas specific to Chinese culture” (He & Li 2009: 14). This is the English that will identify educated Chinese users. Acceptance of a national variety and the articulation of its features as the learning model mark a shift from an exonormative to an endonormative frame of reference. Motivating this normative change is recognition of English as a means of communication globally, that is, that contexts of situation for nonnative users are not limited to interactions with native users. Given that the balance of English users worldwide tips in favor of nonnative users, recognition as a national of one’s native country and not as British or American, say, becomes a legitimate concern.
The status of English in the context of the European Union (EU) further illustrates the impact of globalization on the development of alternative varieties as classroom models. Modiano (2009) outlines how English has become a language of mainland Europe and how it has been adapted to the social and cultural conditions there. Changes in the sociolinguistic landscape of Europe with respect to English have produced a context of increasing social and professional needs for learning and using English and exposure to it through a variety of media. Continental uses, including cross‐cultural, intra‐European communication, just as their functional counterparts in other regions of the world, are realized in ways negotiated among the users. Amid consensus that communicative competence, also referred to as cross‐intercultural communicative competence, it is acknowledged among language teaching professionals that teaching English as a foreign language is no longer valid in the twenty‐first century; rather, teaching needs to focus on English as a communicative medium that serves all users regardless of their first language. Supporting this view is the development of an endonormative model for the EU with local identity markers. Although the status of European English (or Euro‐English) in terms of recognition and acceptance cannot be compared to ideological developments related to China English, Modiano does envision the European variety proceeding in an endormative direction and bringing with it the necessary pedagogical orientation that embraces notions of appropriateness and acceptability suited to the context.
Developments in China and Europe raise the issue of pedagogical approaches for other performance varieties and their contexts of use, for example, South America’s developing Englishes (Berns & Friedrich 2003) or Korea (Ahn 2014; Shim 1999), to name just two contexts of heightened awareness regarding developing national or regional varieties. In such contexts, often English is referred to as a lingua franca, a common language for international communication, as by Modiano above. Others have proposed the term “English as Lingua Franca” (ELF) to capture the forms and/or functions of English as employed primarily by users of Expanding Circle Englishes (Jenkins 2012; Kirkpatrick 2010; Seidlhofer 2011). As such the interaction between and among Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle participants who have dependence on English for communication is the focus. Although success in communication appears to be the focus of ELF research, the meaning of communicative competence in international communication has yet to be clarified. Such clarification depends upon whether it is possible to establish a speech community of ever‐changing members whose primary speech community/ities has/have codified norms, models, and communicative competence. If interactions are among users from around the globe, whose communicative competence, whose culture and social norms guide in determining what is and is not acceptable use of English, of what meanings can be expressed and how they can be expressed? Whose competence and which model in this case would serve as a pedagogical goal?
Teaching for communicative competence goes back centuries (Musumeci 1997), but it was in the 1970s that it was developed and commercialized globally. Its original impetus – need for a pedagogy that would prepare learners to be competent communicators in an increasingly interconnected world – still holds. Given that demand for instruction in English does not appear to be abating at present, communicative language teaching (CLT) remains a viable approach to instruction precisely because it is responsive to local conditions for teaching; to particular learner groups’ needs for the use of English; and the variety or varieties of English already used by learners. Although some have associated CLT with furtherance of standard inner circle varieties as the classroom model (see Rajagopalan 2010), this is not the case for CLT proponents with a polymodel perspective (Berns 1990; Savignon 2002a, 2002b; Sharifian 2013).
Therefore, implementation of CLT includes assessment of teaching materials for linguistic acceptance of difference, for correspondence with the sociocultural context for the use of English as well as the expressed or implied norms against which learners will be judged for the acceptability, appropriateness, and intelligibility of their linguistic performance. Put another way, do the materials reflect the sociocultural reality of the users? Teachers’ communicative competence is also germane to a pluralistic approach. Do teachers in the Outer and as well as Expanding Circles perceive themselves as competent communicators in English or as incompetent when compared to a native‐speaker model? Do learners have realistic expectations of their ability or need to achieve native linguistic and communicative competence? Do learners appreciate what their social and cultural contexts bring to the use and development of the English they use?
The connection between communicative competence and world Englishes is firmly rooted in recognition of the social realities of the users and uses of a given variety (or varieties, in multilingual societies). The construct has helped in refuting claims of a uniform, idealized communicative competence for English and has motivated a growing body of research and scholarship that adopts a pluricentric approach to investigating the nature of acceptability, appropriateness, and intelligibility as well as implications not only for pedagogy but also literary criticism, cultural studies, and language policy, among other areas. There is considerable need for further research into communicative competence, particularly with respect to the parameters of intelligibility for communication between and among various combinations of users and their varieties. Do Expanding Circle users find Inner or Outer Circle varieties easier to interpret and comprehend? What are the factors that contribute to misunderstandings in the various contexts of use? With the expansion in uses and contact with English in the Expanding Circle, to what extent are Expanding Circle performance varieties being replaced by local or regional varieties with their own norms, models, and standards? We are far from in‐depth insights into the communicative competence of the evolving speech communities of Africa, including South Africa in spite of substantial and growing scholarship about the region. How does the communicative competence of this region relate to the sociocultural context? What are the potential meanings available to members of the speech communities, how are they realized, and how are they received by participants in the communication unfamiliar with the norms of these communities? To what extent is communicative competence as a relative notion, as varying along with the context of situation, taken into account in studies of Expanding Circle Englishes as well as those of the Outer Circle? To what extent do views about the necessity of a single norm and standard for English influence the learning, teaching, and assessment of communicative competence?