The concept of communicative competence must be embedded in the
notion of cultural competence, or the total set of knowledge and skills which
speakers bring into a situation. This view is consonant with a semioti approach which defines culture as meaning, and views all ethnographers
(not just ethnographers of communication) as dealing with symbols (e.g.
Douglas 1970; Geertz 1973). The systems of culture are patterns of symbols,
and language is only one of the symbolic systems in this network. Interpreting
the meaning of linguistic behavior requires knowing the meaning in which
it is embedded.