The role of utterance, contextual relevance and content: Based appropriateness in effective communicative competence

Abstract

In last several decades, English language teaching in India, has emerged as a special research area as well as a discipline of study. The way in which communication takes place in this globalized world, is totally changed and has become challenging. Communicating cleverly, instantly and appropriately according to the situations is the need of an hour. Communicative Competence is one of the significant concept/terms in ELT since 1960s and introduced by Dell Hymes. It is defined as ‘an ability of a person to use language according to the context and situation. As proposed by Malinowski in a practical use of language utterance and context are inseparable. Context plays a very significant role in deriving the meaning of an utterance. Communicative Competence differs as per the speakers who convey their proposed meaning in language and within the context. The present paper will focus on some basic questions in relation to the effectiveness of Communicative Competence, like, what role the context and content plays in communication and how it makes a difference to what a person communicates? How the meaning of an utterance is subject to the context in which it is spoken? And why content-based appropriateness as per context is necessary for the effectiveness of Communicative Competence.