It has been claimed that error analysis (EA) has two broad aims and two levels of application: pedagogical (relevant to syllabus design and second language teaching) and psycholinguistic (relevant to language learning studies). At the moment, EA's pedagogical claims are stronger than its psycholinguistic ones. In its early days, EA defined its object of study as the native and the target language and the points of similarity between them. This was based on the notions of contrastive analysis and interference. From criticism of this approach grew the notion of interlanguage. This, too, is open to criticism. It is proposed that a new approach is needed toward the learner's knowledge and use of the target language, one which is neither purely psycholinguistic nor pedagogical, but which incorporates a sociolinguistic element. The suggested approach describes the learner's language in terms of his or her "linguistic repertoire," which includes the native language and the target language. (AM)