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The previous sections examine the complex relation between language and society as well as the relation between language and culture. It is obvious that to be able to use a language is not merely to manipulate a system of code. There are striking different connotations between the ability to speak and the ability to talk. Linguists like Noam Chomsky who are not concerned with language use propose the term linguistic competence to account for a speaker's knowledge of his language. Sociolinguists like Dell Hymes criticized this concept of competence. He argues that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. A child acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others. This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values and motivations concerning language, its features and uses, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of language with the other code of communicative conduct (Hymes 1972). Based on this argument Hymes and others propose communicative competence as the most general term to account for both the tacit knowledge of language and the ability to use it. According to Hymes (1972), there are four parameters that underlie a speaker's communicative competence, namely the ability to judge: 1. Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible; This theory of communication has exerted strong influences on linguistic description and language teaching, a point to be elaborated in Chapter 10. |