Communicative Competence Revisited: An Ethnopoetic Analysis of Narrative Performances of Identity

This chapter explores how definitions of communicative competence might be expanded, refined, and investigated by analyzing the roles of creativity, regimentation, and poetic structure in autobiographical narrative. Assuming that the “creative manipulations of cultural rules” that English Language Learners accomplish often go unrecognized in practice, the analysis demonstrates the need for teachers of English language learners to recognize and build on the multiple aesthetic resources that adult learners of English bring with them to the language learning endeavor. The analysis reveals dynamic connections between language in use, social identity, teaching practices, and learning processes. It also contributes to our understanding of how a narrator’s choices facilitate her/his emergent and growing competencies as a language learner, contributing citizen, and engaged participant in local communities of practice. The chapter thus illustrates how Educational Linguistics as an intellectual endeavor is not only grounded in history with a constant set of questions and concerns but, also, responsive to recent developments in theory, method, and practice.