2.1 Communicative Competence

Pragmatic competence is normally analyzed under the framework of communicative competence. Thus，it is untenable to discuss pragmatic competence without describing communicative competence. The following are the definitions and explanations of communicative competence.

Chomsky（1965）put forward the concept “competence” in his linguistic theory. According to his hypothesis，competence refers to a speaker’s knowledge of his/her native language rules，or his/her linguistic competence. It is the system of phonological，lexical and syntactic rules，and a formal grammar，acquired or internalized，by native speakers during the process of language acquisition. It underlies the native speakers’ ability to understand or produce the sentences of a given language，and identify deviant and ambiguous sentences.

Hymes（1972）proposed the notion of “communicative competence” to respond to the theories of Chomsky. He put forward the concept of socialinguistic competence as a supplement of linguistic competence. Social-inguistic competence is another rule system of native speakers. Native speakers know what is socially appropriate or inappropriate and can adjust their language use to such factors as the topic，situation，social distance intuitively. Hymes（1972）asserted that linguistic competence and sociolinguistic competence are both needed to explain language acquisition and language use. This view encompasses both knowledge and the ability to put that knowledge into use in communication，and so far has exerted great influences on language teaching and assessment.

Canale & Swain（1980）and Canale（1983）built up a communicative competence model in which not only linguistic competence/grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence，but also discourse competence（the ability to combine utterances and communicative functions）and strategic competence（the ability to compensate for deficits or problems in communication and do different types of planning）are included. This model is regarded as a clarification and improvement of that of Hymes（1972）. Although Canale’s model does not put forward the concept “pragmatic competence”，appropriateness of meaning and appropriateness of form are involved.

Bachman（1989）presented a more refined framework，which he calls communicative language ability. In this framework，communicative language ability is divided into three components：language competence，strategic competence and psychophysical skills. He held that language competence is further composed of two parts：organizational competence and pragmatic competence（See Figure 2.1）.

Figure 2.1 Bachman’s Model of Language Competence

Source：Adapted from Bachman（1989，p.253）.

In Bachman’s model，pragmatic competence is composed of sociolinguistic competence and illocutionary competence. Sociolinguistic competence refers to sensitivity to both language and context. Knowledge of the contextual appropriateness and the linguistic forms of realizing illocutions are also in his concern. Illocutionary competence concerns the knowledge of pragmatic conventions，including speech acts and speech functions. Bachman’s model of language competence is regarded as the most acceptable one up to now.