Phrase guide

communicative competence

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

No pronunciation record was provided for this word.

1

noun

Meaning 1

A language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: countable, uncountable

Topics: human-sciences, linguistics, sciences, social-science, sociolinguistics, sociology

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

Narrower terms: strategic competence

History

Etymology

No etymology was provided for this word.

Across languages

Translations

4 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Chinese Mandarin: 交際能力 /交际能力 (jiāojì nénglì) — language user's knowledge
  • Finnish: kommunikaatiokyky — language user's knowledge
  • Portuguese: competência comunicativa — language user's knowledge
  • Ukrainian: комунікати́вна компете́нтність (komunikatývna kompeténtnistʹ) — language user's knowledge