My language, your culture: whose communicative competence?

ABSTRACT: The paper examines the notion of ‘communicative competence’ specifically with reference to transplanted varieties of English (e.g. Indian English) used in various non‐Western sociocultural contexts in the world. It is claimed that the notion of communicative competence that relies on the traditional notion of ‘competence’ of a native speaker is misleading for understanding and interpreting English texts written in these contexts by, for example, Indians and Africans. The examples presented here show that the judgements of native speakers with regard to deviations (or innovations) in such varieties of English are as much based on attitudinal factors, as on genuine expectations in the context of verbal interaction. The concepts intelligibility and interpretability are viewed from the perspective of the conventions (literary, cultural and so on) developed in the institutionalized non‐native varieties of English. The examples are taken from written texts, and several theoretical and methodological questions are raised.