英语论文网

h no particular concern as to its content. Are these examples of “communication”? If so, what do we mean by “communication” in the absence of an audience, or with an audience assumed to be completely unresponsive or with no intention to convey information or modify belief or attitude? (Chomsky, 1980: pp. 229 - 230) His response is that we must deprive the idea, communication, of all importance or we must reject the view that the purpose of language is communication. He adds that no substantive proposals emanate from any formulation of the view that the purpose of language is communication or that it is pointless to study it apart from its communicative function. Chomsky’s views about communication might well be in error; communicativists have challenged and rejected them. Challenge and rejection do not, however, stem from examining how linguistic competence emanates from his interpretation of Descartes, Russell, Rousseau, and von Humboldt. But communicativists do include linguistic competence in their broad version of competence. And while they state that they have examined linguistic competence, found its scope to be too narrow and resorted to devising a broad version within which it is included, inclusion is not logically admissible. Communicativists have not examined the basis to Chomskyan linguistic competence. Alternatively expressed, my argument is that the communicative emphasis within C.L.T. on the purposeful nature of language does not emerge from a parallel or identical view about the purpose of language held by Chomsky. Therefore, communicativists should not use communicative competence as a central basis to fulfilling their aim of helping students. I wish to strengthen this inference by pointing to glaring contradictions within Bachman’s extended linguistic competence. This expansion incorporates illocutionary and sociolinguistic competence in pragmatic competence, one subdivision of linguistic competence. It is a focus on illocutionary competence which enables an observer to identify the inconsistency. Bachman does accept the Chomskyan notion of linguistic competence. This is not, however, acceptance which is synchronous with what should properly be called the illocutionary aspect of semantic competence conceptualised by John Searle whose ideas about language use are diametrically opposed to those of Chomsky’s. My point here is that an analyst cannot logically fuse or incorporate elements of the Searlean and Chomskyan views of competence. Searle ( 1974, pp. 28 - 29 ) says semantic competence is the ability to perform and understand speech acts or illocutionary acts. These acts are some of the many acts associated with a speaker’s utterance in speech situations, speakers, hearers, and utterances. ( Searle, 1971, p. 39 ). Further, in these situations, the acts are concerned with performances such as making statements, asking questions, or issuing commands and have their expression in verb forms like state, assert, command, or order. He points out that if semantic competence is viewed from the standpoint of one’s ability to use sentences in performing speech acts, the acts will be seen as rule governed and intentional. The speaker who utters a sentence and means it literally utters it in accordance with certain semantic rules and with the intention of invoking those rules to render his utterance the performance of a certain speech act. ( Searle, 1974: p. 29 ) To know semantic competence is to identify connecti