Critical Communicative Competence: The Interplay of Cognitive Flexibility, Language Awareness, and Cultural Awareness

Abstract

Changing living and communicative contexts have resulted in individuals assuming multiple and variable identities and facing diverse discursive and linguistic practices. Therefore, in the last decades, critical communicative competence has been established as an essential framework for addressing contemporary challenges. In the chapter, critical communicative competence is analytically explored through fundamental characteristics of critical thinking and a key competence as a complex interplay of cognitive, emotional-evaluative, and actional dimensions, implied on each of three interrelated components of communicative competence: cognitive, linguistic, and contextual. In the cognitive domain, multicultural and multimedia contexts demand cognitive flexibility in schemas and strategies. Critical linguistic awareness is essential in the linguistic domain as it enables a speaker to recognise the constructive and interpretative nature of language. In the contextual domain, critical cultural awareness is a tool for understanding how speakers’ choices are influenced by their culture and context. Despite the analytical approach, dimensions and components are considered interrelated and interdependent, and only in interaction, leading to more responsible and sensitive communication.