What is the difference between competence and performance?

Chomsky separates competence and performance; he describes 'competence' as an idealized

capacity that is located as a psychological or mental property or function and ‘performance’
as the production of actual utterances. In short, competence involves “knowing” the language
and performance involves “doing” something with the language. The difficulty with this
construct is that it is very difficult to assess competence without assessing performance.

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE. In LINGUISTICS, the distinction between a person's knowledge

of language (competence) and use of it (performance). Performance contains slips of the tongue and
false starts, and represents only a small sample of possible utterances: I own two-thirds of an emu is a
good English sentence, but is unlikely to occur in any collected sample. The terms were proposed by
Noam CHOMSKY in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, when he stressed the need for a GENERATIVE
GRAMMAR that mirrors a speaker's competence and captures the creative aspect of linguistic ability.
In Knowledge of Language (1986), Chomsky replaced the terms with I-language (internalized language)
and E-language (externalized language). A similar dichotomy, LANGUE and PAROLE, was proposed by
Ferdinand de Saussure (1915), who stressed the social aspects of langue, regarding it as shared
knowledge, whereas Chomsky stressed the individual nature of competence. See COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE, MISTAKE.

Langue

La langue is the whole system of language that precedes and makes speech possible. A sign is a basic unit of
langue.

Learning a language, we master the system of grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation. These are all elements
of langue.

Langue is a system in that it has a large number of elements whereby meaning is created in the arrangements of its
elements and the consequent relationships between these arranged elements.
Parole

Parole is the concrete use of the language, the actual utterances. It is an external manifestation of langue. It is the
usage of the system, but not the system.
Discussion

By defining Langue and Parole, Saussure differentiates between the language and how it is used, and therefore
enabling these two very different things to be studied as separate entities.

As a structuralist, Saussure was interested more in la langue than parole. It was the system by which meaning
could be created that was of interest rather than individual instances of its use.
Marxist Mikhail Bakhtin (1929) criticized the splitting of langue and parole as separating individuals and society
where it matters most, at the point of production. He developed a 'dialogic' theory of utterances where language is
understood in terms of how it orients the speaker/writer to the listener/reader. Words are subject to negotiation,
contest and struggle. Language is strongly affected by social context.