communicative competence

American

noun

Linguistics.

a speaker's internalized knowledge both of the grammatical rules of a language and of the rules for appropriate use in social contexts.

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communicative competence

More important, for an audience of potential voters, is discerning whether an auditioner has communicative competence: knows how to adapt style to setting, whether a lectern at Hofstra or the Oval Office.

From Time ● Sep. 28, 2016

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023