Competence vs. performance

In order to do theoretical linguistics, we distinguish linguistic competence from linguistic performance.

Competence: A speaker’s mental facility for producing and understanding novel utterances of his or

her language. You can think of this as the speaker’s mental ‘linguistic program’, or simply as the

speaker’s (unconscious) knowledge of the grammar of his or her native language.

Performance: A speaker’s use of language, i.e. their actual acts of producing and understanding

utterances.

Kinds of linguistic competence

The following form the core components of the grammar, all of which are included in a speaker’s linguistic competence. These components of the grammar correspond in turn to four of the major subfields of linguistics:

Phonetics: The physical production and perception of the inventory of sounds used in producing language.

Phonology: The mental organization of physical sounds; the patterns formed by the way sounds are combined in a a language, and the restrictions on permissible sound combinations.

Morphology: The structure and formation of words.

Syntax: The structure and formation of sentences; possible and impossible configurations of words.

Semantics: The meaning of sentences.

This knowledge is for the most part subconscious for most speakers. We are not aware of it and have no direct access to it either. The only way we can get at this knowledge is through the actual language we produce. This language use is called performance. Performance is the actual manifestation of the knowledge in our heads. But it is not a perfect manifestation of this knowledge- it is flawed by speech errors, interruptions, distractions, etc. We deviate from our ideal language knowledge and alter it when we talk.

Let me draw your attention to the parallel with riding a bike to make this point a bit clearer. When we learn to ride a bike, we acquire the knowledge of many different little parts of the overall process: how to get on, how to balance, how to pedal and steer, etc. That's our competence. Most of this knowledge becomes subconscious. When we ride a bike we don’t think about these steps along the way. But sometimes it happens that we make a mistake while riding - we may lose our balance and fall, or we may slip while pedaling. Does this mean that we alter our knowledge and "forgot" how to ride a bike? Certainly not! We just experience the difference between competence and actual performance occasionally. Even if we end up in a cast in the hospital because of our performance error we still have our competence of how to ride a bike. One of my friends once used a different example to explain the difference between competence and performance. He compared performance to a finished dish with all its individual differences and imperfections. Competence he compared to the measured ingredients, which ideally should be the same every time the dish is made, but which of course are not ever exactly the same. Perhaps this comparison helps some of you to better understand the difference between competence and performance.

As human, you need to have access to your language competence. I want to give another example for better understanding that mentioned at our book. If you woke up one morning and decided to stop talking, you would still have knowledge of your language. This ability or competence underlies linguistic behavior. If you don’t know  the language, you can't speak it; but if you know  the language, you may choose not to speak.

There is no conclusion here, but language is what makes humans – human,unique,different from animals. Human=language.