Communicative competence extends to both knowledge and expectation
of who may or may not speak in certain settings, when to speak and when
to remain silent, to whom one may speak, how one may talk to persons of
different statuses and roles, what nonverbal behaviors are appropriate in
various contexts, what the routines for turn-taking are in conversation, how
to ask for and give information, how to request, how to offer or decline
assistance or cooperation, how to give commands, how to enforce discipline,
and the like – in short, everything involving the use of language and other
communicative modalities in particular social settings.
Clear cross-cultural differences can and do produce conflicts or inhibit communication.
For example, certain American Indian groups are accustomed
to waiting several minutes in silence before responding to a question or
taking a turn in conversation, while the native English speakers they may
be talking to have very short time frames for responses or conversational
turn-taking, and find long silences embarrassing. Conversely, Abrahams
(1973) has pointed out that among African Americans conversations may
involve several persons talking at the same time, a practice which would violate
White middle-class rules of interaction. And as mentioned earlier, even
such matters as voice level differ cross-culturally, and speaker intent may be
misconstrued because of different expectation patterns for interpretation.