Definition

Noun: 1. (Linguistics) The actual, observable use of language by a speaker or writer in real-world situations. This encompasses everything a person produces when speaking or writing, including sentences, pauses, repetitions, grammatical mistakes, slips of the tongue, and other features of spontaneous communication. It is contrasted with linguistic competence, which is the underlying, unconscious knowledge of language rules.

Usage

• Linguistic performance is studied to understand how language is produced and comprehended in real time, accounting for cognitive constraints and situational factors.
• It is often analyzed in fields like psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition research.
• The term is frequently used in contrast to "competence" to distinguish between knowledge and action.

Examples

• A researcher might analyze a child's linguistic performance—including their hesitations and word order errors—to understand their developing language skills.
• The difference between a speaker's linguistic competence (knowing the grammar) and their linguistic performance (making a mistake under pressure) is a key concept in theoretical linguistics.
• Factors like nervousness, fatigue, or distraction can negatively affect a person's linguistic performance during a speech.

Advanced Usage

• Performance error: A specific mistake (e.g., a slip of the tongue like "teep a kape" for "keep a tape") that occurs in linguistic performance but does not reflect a lack of linguistic competence.
• Performance grammar: A model of grammar that attempts to account for the mechanisms and constraints involved in the production and comprehension of utterances (performance), as opposed to a competence grammar which models abstract knowledge.

Variants and Related Words

• Performance (noun, general): The act of carrying out or accomplishing something. In linguistics, it is specifically qualified as performance.
• Linguistic competence (noun): The unconscious knowledge of grammar and language rules that a fluent speaker possesses.

Synonyms

• Language use
• Language production
• Actual speech
• E-language (Externalized language, in some theoretical frameworks)

Antonyms

• Linguistic competence
• I-language (Internalized language, in some theoretical frameworks)

Noun

1. (linguistics) a speaker's actual use of language in real situations; what the speaker actually says, including grammatical errors and other non-linguistic features such as hesitations and other disfluencies (contrasted with linguistic competence)