Discourse regarding student perceptions of their communication competence was collected from students in geographically diverse university systems in the U.S. These student discourses were analyzed for patterns that revealed shared topics, ideas, and values regarding communication competence in a variety of situations. Three characteristics of student understanding of communication competence emerged from the discourse analysis: (1) a conception of communication competence as quality of performance, (2) conceptions of communication competence that vary from the purely physical to the purely intellectual, and (3) a conception of communication competence as a form of sociality. Discourse analysis, an interpretative methodology in the tradition of constructivism and ethnography, is a demonstrably useful approach to the study of communication competence.