Decentering and recentering communicative competence

• Communicative competence is an emergent phenomenon.
• It is subject to both large-scale dynamics and the specifics of interaction.
• It is intersubjective, multimodal, multi-scalar and political.
• Its exploration enables the dismantling of the macro–micro divide.
• New media demand a rethinking of the constitution of communicative competence.

Communicative competence, a concept that emerged in the 1970s, is in need of rethinking. This rethinking operates in two directions: on the one hand, by taking into account the new forms of interaction and contexts associated with globalization; on the other hand, by locating communicative competence as emerging out of embodied, intersubjective, and multimodal interaction. Communicative competence is not pre-given but developmental, it thrives on on-going processes rather than fixed procedures, and it is informed by the specificity of contexts. The articles in this special issue explore these qualities through the analysis of interactional data and their context in a variety of societies.