Conversational Communicative Competence in a Non-Native Language
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1997
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
In this study, the communicative competence of native female speakers of French was
compared ·to the communicative competence of native female speakers of English, all of whom
are bilingual in French and English. Because each pair of women spoke in both French and
English at separate, distinct times, the manifestations of communicative competence in each
language revealed the importance of discourse and strategic competence in the social context of
conversation.
The methodology consisted of recording the conversations of four pairs of women.
Two of these groups were native speakers of French, and the other two were native speakers
of English. Each pair of women were given a list of questions written in both languages
concerning their personal ideas of cultural identity and bilingualism. They were instructed to
converse for at least 30 minutes in their native language, discussing one set of questions and
then another 30 minutes in their acquired language, discussing a different list of questions. In
keeping with the sociological aspect of this analysis, the conversations were played for the
participants in order to solicit their spontaneous interpretations and reactions.
Bilingual speakers, much like any speakers, draw upon their own native socio-cultural
nonns and values when communicating in a second language, as well as using their own
personal communicative strategies. Whereas cross-cultural conversation provides the setting
for miscommunication and misinterpretation on a socio-cultural basis, mono-cultural interaction
in a foreign tongue (that is, speakers from the same culture speaking a foreign language) would
allow for qualitative evaluation of discursive and strategic competence in a social context.
The theory of interactional sociolinguistics, popularised by Gumperz( 1972), analyzes
language use in its original context and takes into account the factors mentioned above when
conducting this analysis. Speech acts are acknowledged as specific instances of language use
that relate to strategic and socio-cultural competence. Discourse competence is unfortunately
not factored into the analysis, due to the socio-cultural focus of the studies. The theoretical
model of communicative competence created by Canale and Swain(l981) for primarily second
language learning, posits the three subcategories of grammatical, strategic, and sociolinguistic
competence, which are used to measure the communicative competence of the individual. This
model must be modified by assuming that the two divisions of sociolinguistic competence, i.e.
socio-cultural and discourse, are significant enough to become separate categories, along with
strategic competence. Grammatical competence is presupposed in the social context of
conversation and not a viable category of evaluation.