Discourse Competence
Discourse competence is the ability to produce and interpret connected, coherent stretches of language — whether spoken or written — that function as unified texts rather than collections of unrelated sentences.
Theoretical Origins
Canale (1983) added discourse competence as the fourth component of communicative competence, separating it from sociolinguistic competence in the original Canale and Swain (1980) model. Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) later placed it at the centre of their model, arguing that discourse competence is where all other competences converge in actual communication (see Communicative Competence Models).
Core Components
| Component | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Cohesion | Explicit linguistic ties across sentences — reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) |
| Coherence | Underlying logical and thematic connectedness — whether a text "makes sense" as a whole |
| Rhetorical organisation | How ideas are structured — problem-solution, cause-effect, comparison, chronological sequence |
| Genre conventions | Knowledge of text-type expectations — an academic essay, a business email, and a narrative each follow different structural norms |
| Information structure | Theme-rheme progression, given-new organisation, topic sentences, paragraph unity |
| Discourse Markers | Signals that organise text and guide interpretation (however, in addition, so, right) |
Spoken vs Written Discourse Competence
The demands differ substantially:
- Written: paragraph structure, topic sentences, thesis statements, logical connectors, academic Register. Writers have time to plan and revise.
- Spoken: Turn-taking, Adjacency Pairs, Repair, real-time topic management, backchannel signals. Speakers must produce coherent discourse under time pressure with no editing.
A learner may have strong written discourse competence but struggle to maintain coherence in unplanned speech — or vice versa.
L2 Difficulties
- Producing text that is cohesive but not coherent (overusing connectors without logical structure)
- L1 rhetorical transfer — applying L1 text organisation patterns to L2 writing (Kaplan's 1966 contrastive rhetoric)
- Underdeveloped paragraph structure — no clear topic sentences, abrupt shifts
- Difficulty managing spoken discourse — holding the floor, shifting topics, closing conversations
Classroom Implications
- Teach discourse organisation explicitly through model texts and Genre-based approaches
- Use Discourse Analysis activities that have learners examine how real texts achieve Coherence
- Practise Cohesive Devices in context, not as isolated grammar items
- Give learners frameworks for spoken discourse: opening sequences, Topic Management, closing sequences
- Develop awareness of how Discourse Markers function differently in speech and writing