Recent work in applied linguistics has expanded our understanding of the rule governed nature of language. The concept of an idealized speaker -hearer whose linguistic competence is abstract and separate from reality has been enriched by the notion of an actual interlocutor who possesses communicative compe tence, a knowledge of language which accounts for its use in real-world con texts. Areas of variation previously relegated to idiosyncratic differences in performance have been found to be dynamic yet consistent and lend themselves to study and systematic description. Because language...

Recent work in applied linguistics has expanded our understanding of the rule- governed nature of language. The concept of an idealized speaker -hearer whose linguistic competence is abstract and separate from reality has been enriched by the notion of an actual interlocutor who possesses communicative compe- tence, a knowledge of language which accounts for its use in real-world con- texts. Areas of variation previously relegated to idiosyncratic differences in performance have been found to be dynamic yet consistent and lend themselves to study and systematic description. Because language...