Transitioning from Communicative Competence to Multimodal and Intercultural Competencies: A Systematic Review

societies
Systematic Review
Transitioning from Communicative Competence to Multimodal
and Intercultural Competencies: A Systematic Review
Khomeshwaree Mootoosamy 
and Vahid Aryadoust *


1. Introduction
Over the years, researchers have investigated and assigned multiple meanings to the
construct of communicative competence, e.g., [1 – 8]. In her study, Savignon [9] rejected
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.
the distinction between performance and competence by asserting that the only way of
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
ascertaining the level of speakers’ communicative competence is through performance. Fur-
This article is an open access article
ther, as an extension from the works of Hymes [ 10, 11 ], a number of researchers [ 1, 3 –5, 9 ,12 ]
distributed under the terms and
have developed models of communicative competence (CC), not as models describing the
conditions of the Creative Commons
constituents of actual communication, but rather as a way of encapsulating psycholinguistic
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
features of CC with the objective of second language pedagogy, assessment, and curriculum
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
development [ 13]. While Canale and Swain [4 ] and Canale [3] developed a descriptive

Societies 2024, 14, 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14070115 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/societies
Societies 2024, 14, 115 
2 of 26


2. Rationale of the Study
Since the emergence of the term communicative competence (CC), to our knowledge,
no systematic review or close analysis of empirical studies has been conducted on this no-
tion. Specifically, no review on the definition and operationalization of CC has been carried
out in order to explicate the notion further. This excludes the systematic review about inter-
cultural communicative competence (ICC) [23], reviewing online intercultural exchanges
Societies 2024, 14, 115 
3 of 26

and ICC development in regard to the modality employed for each exchange, and rela-
tively sparse qualitative and quantitative studies investigating the relationships between
the constituents and validity of the key concept of communicative competence [2,7,8,24].
Therefore, additional research needs to be carried out to examine the multifaceted nature
of CC and gain empirical evidence about the potential manifestations of CC within em-
pirical studies. By reviewing the aforementioned major models of CC and CLA in the
literature along with the ensuing empirical research, it can be said that despite some minor
terminological modifications, the models share similar general concepts and with time,
researchers and theorists endeavoured to improve and develop the models proposed by
previous scholars. Demonstrably, three constituents are included in the models of CC:
grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence, whilst the two other components,
discourse and pragmatic competencies, are represented in a disparate manner. Therefore, it
will also be important to ascertain the manner in which the features, characteristics, and
components of CC have been defined and investigated. This endeavour would provide a
clear portrayal of the mixed specifications of CC.

3. Methods
3.1. Procedures
The Web of Science database was utilized as the primary search engine to effectuate
the literature search. The Web of Science is commonly accepted as an impartial data source
that selects its journals based on their fulfilment of high scientific impact and editorial
standards [25]. In this context, in order to generate a list of studies relevant to the construct
under review, it was deemed appropriate to utilize the following terms “communicative
competence” and “communicative language ability” as the choice for the search keywords.
The aforementioned keywords stem from the seminal works of Hymes [11 ], Canale and
Swain [4], and Bachman [ 1] and were combined in order to generate more generic and
inclusive results.
The PRISMA flowchart [ 26 ] in Figure 1 details and exemplifies the course taken during
the data search and screening. The journal search was not limited to any time range
as it was crucial to appraise all relevant studies since the formulation of the concept of
communicative competence since the late 1960s [10, 11]. It was also important to refine
the search further by limiting the journals to the domains of “linguistics” and “language
linguistics” in the selection of peer-reviewed articles. Finally, the search was additionally
refined to a list of selected 20 peer-reviewed journals (see Table 1).

Table 1. List of 20 peer-reviewed journals.

List of 20 Journals
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Applied Linguistics Review
Computer Assisted Language Learning