19 by speakers and hearers when dealing with communication. In their concept of
communicative competence, knowledge refers to the conscious or unconscious knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of language
use. To add, they also believe that there are three types of knowledge: knowledge of underlying grammatical principles, knowledge of how to use language in a
social context in order to fulfill communicative functions and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse
principles. To add, communicative competence is not only as an inherent grammatical competence but also as the ability to use grammatical competence in
a variety of c ommunicative situations Hymes as cited in Bagarić and Djigunović,
2007. Accordingly, Savile-Troike 2006: 100 also defines communicative
competence as ―everything that a speaker needs to know in order to communicate appropriately within a particular com
munity.‖ This definition, besides supporting Canale and Swain definition on communicative competence, adds the idea
‗communicate appropriately within a particular community‘ as the underlying idea. This imposes that the main point is the ability to use language as the native
speakers‘ use.
b. Models of Communicative Competence
Communicative competence itself is a broad concept since it encompasses many sub competences. Due to its broadness, many theorists develop their own
model of communicative competence. The first theorists who developed the model were Canale and Swain
Bagarić and Djigunović, 2007: 97. They propose
20 a model of communicative competence which consists of three main components;
grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competence. Such framework of communicative competence is to support a curriculum design and evaluation
Savignon, 1997: 40. Later on, Canale then elaborated this framework into four components by adding discourse competence to the former model.
Now let us look at a glance respective component. Firstly, grammatical competence is learners‘ mastery on linguistic code, the ability to use lexical,
morphological, syntactic, and phonological features of a language a and to manipulate these features to form words and sentences Savignon, 1997.
Secondly, sociolinguistic competence is learners‘ ability in recognizing the social context in which language is used, the roles of participants, the information
they share, and the function of the interaction Savignon, 1997. Thirdly, discourse competence which is sometimes called textual
competence is learners‘ ability to form and comprehend series of meaningful
sentence or sentences whole. This competence is mostly used by learners in recognizing the theme or topic of a paragraph, chapter or a book, getting the gist
of conversation on the phone or a speech Savignon, 1997. Fourthly, strategic competence is learners‘ ability in coping with situation in
which when they can not think of a word, when their massage is misunderstood, when they can not understand what their interlocutor say because she speaks too
fast, etc. The strategies mostly used by learners in dealing with such situation are paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance, and guessing
Savignon, 1997.
21 Another communicative competence model are also proposed by Bachman
and Palmer Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, and Thurrel, 1995: 8. They elaborate Canale and Swain‘s model of communicative competence based on language testing
result under the heading of language knowledge. The model is divided into two broad main categories, language knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. The
categories are then divided into several sub-categories respectively. The former is defined as ―the knowledge of the components involved in controlling the formal
structure of language for producing or recognizing grammatically correct sentences and for ordering these to form texts‖. This knowledge covers 1
grammatical knowledge which is similar to Canale and Swain‘s grammatical competence 2 textual knowledge which is similar to but more elaborated than
Canale and Swain‘s discourse competence. Whereas the latter is defined as the knowledge of ―the components of that enable us to relate words and utterances to
their meanings, to the intentions of language users and to relevant characteristics of the language use contexts. This knowledge encompasses 1 lexical knowledge
which is the knowledge of the meanings of words and the ability to use figurative language, 2 functional knowledge which is the knowledge of the relationships
between utterances and the intentions, or communicative purposes of language users, 3 sociolinguistic knowledge which is similar to Canale Swains
sociolinguistic competence. This communicative competence model can be seen in the following figure.
22
Figure 2.1 : Bachman‘s Communicative Competence Model Another communicative competence model was also proposed by Celce-
Murcia,Dornyei, and Thurrell 1995. They develop a communicative competence model which evolved from C
anale and Swain‘s model. The following figure is the chronological relationship of each sub-competence that they developed.
Communicativ e Language
Ability Organizational
Knowledge
Pragmatic Knowledge
Grammatical Knowledge
Textual Knowledge
Lexical Knowledge
Functional Knowledge
Sociolinguistic Knowledge
23
Figure 2.2: Schematic Representation of Communicative Competence Model Proposed by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, and Thurrell
Based on the figure above, it can be seen that Celce-Murcia at. al. develop a communicative competence model which is more rigid. The relationship between
one competence and other competence is more dynamic. It can be seen that the core competence is discourse competence. Then it is covered with three
competences; sociocultural competence, linguistic competence, and actional competence. Meanwhile, strategic competence covers all of those competence.
According to this model, each competence does not stand alone, but they have a reciprocal relationship between each other. So far, four models of communicative
competence have already been discussed. To sum, here are the comparison of the models that have been discussed.
24
Figure 2.3 : Comparison of Communicative Competence Model Adapted from Celce-Murcia et. al 1995
From that figure, it can be clearly seen that all of those models have many things in common. Most of the models differently divide the division of each sub-
competences but the essence are still the same. Among those models, Bachman and Palmer‘s model is the only model which explicitly mention the position of
pragmatic competence, while the others merge pragmatic competence into linguisticgrammatical, actional, and sociocultural competences.
In this study, the researcher uses Bachman and Palmer‘s model of
communicative competence since the position of pragmatic competence is explicitly included in this model. Meanwhile, other models of communicative
competence do not explicitly mention pragmatic competence as one component of communicative competence. In addition, other models also divide pragmatic
25 competence into three sub-competences.
Thus, Bachman and Palmer‘s model is really suitable for this study which focuses on pragmatic features of English text
books.
3. Pragmatic Competence
