Linguistic performance

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The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe "the actual use of language in concrete situations".^[1] It is used to describe both the production, sometimes called parole, as well as the comprehension of language.^[2] Performance is defined in opposition to "competence"; the latter describes the mental knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language.^[3]

Part of the motivation for the distinction between performance and competence comes from speech errors: despite having a perfect understanding of the correct forms, a speaker of a language may unintentionally produce incorrect forms. This is because performance occurs in real situations, and so is subject to many non-linguistic influences. For example, distractions or memory limitations can affect lexical retrieval (Chomsky 1965:3), and give rise to errors in both production and perception.^[4] Such non-linguistic factors are completely independent of the actual knowledge of language,^[5] and establish that speakers' knowledge of language (their competence) is distinct from their actual use of language (their performance).^[6]