Psycholinguistics: Competence and Performance

Abstract

There has been a tendency, natural perhaps in such ‘verbal’ disciplines as philosophy and linguistics, to assume that language and communication are the same thing. But while no one would deny that language is one powerful medium of human communication, is it the only one? Is there any real distinction between communicating one's desire to leave a dinner party by making verbal remarks like, ‘I must go’ or ‘We could only get Jane as a babysitter’, as opposed to fidgeting, standing up and looking longingly towards the door? As Michael Argyle argues, a great deal of information is conveyed by non-verbal cues. To take the argument a step further, are even verbal statements examples of purely linguistic communication ? Whereas the manifest linguistic content of ‘I must go’ is obvious to anyone who speaks English, the meaning of the remark about the babysitter can only be understood by those who know the particular neighbourhood social context in which it was uttered. Does it make sense, then, to try and analyse the linguistic structure and content of an utterance without taking into account the use to which it is being put in a particular extra-linguistic context?