Communicative competence: key authors and timeline

Communicative competence

60's

linguistic competence as predominant movement

Noam Chomsky

1972

Dell Hymes says linguistic component is not useful in real communication

1966

Dell Hymes coined the term communicative competence

1980

Canale and Swain defined communicative competence in terms of three components which are grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence.

1988

According to Spitzberg, communicative competence refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness

1975

Grice specified four elements of appropriate communication - quantity, quality, relevancy, and manner of message sending

2003

Saville- Troike: Communicative Competence – Involves knowing not only the language code but also what to say to whom, and how to say it appropriately in any given situation

1989-1996

Saville-Troike divides the central construct of communicative competence into three types of knowledge: linguistic, interactional, and cultural knowledge.