The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

37World Englishes and Communicative Competence

MARGIE BERNS

1 Introduction

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.

2 Communicative Competence: Sources

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 ...