A collection of essays addresses the connection between the study of communication and its sociocultural contexts and the approach to second language teaching based on the concept of communicative competence. Essays include: "From Communicative Competence to Communicative Language Pedagogy" (Michael Canale); "The Domain of Pragmatics" (Bruce Fraser); "Rules of Speaking" (Nessa Wolfson); "The Structure of Teachers' Directives" (Janet Holmes); "Conversational Analysis" (Jack C. Richards and Richard W. Schmidt); "Face in Interethnic Communication" (Ron Scollon and Suzanne B. K. Scollon); "Two Puzzles for Linguistic Theory: Nativelike Selection and Nativelike Fluency" (Andrew Pawley and Frances Hodgetts Syder); and "Monitoring and the Second Language Learner" (Donald M. Morrison and Graham Low). An extensive bibliography and index are included. (MSE)