Reconsidering communicative competence in Web 2.0 environments: “Asians in the library” and four parodic responses on YouTube

•The notion of communicative competence is reconsidered by analyzing YouTube videos.•The original reproduces racial stereotypes about Asians, using Mock Asian.•The posters are constrained and afforded by gender and racial identities.•Web 2.0 environments further complicate the notion of CC.•CC involves knowledge about the agentive participation in Web 2.0 environments.

By analyzing five viral YouTube videos, I reconsider the notion of communicative competence (CC). Specifically, I examine a rant video, which has been widely circulated as “Asians in the library”, and four parodic responses to it, by focusing on reported speech. I suggest that the notion of CC be conceptualized as multiple competences in a heterogeneous speech community in which there are multiple norms. At the same time, each poster is highly constrained by such factors as gender and race and by the technological design of YouTube within which she has agency. Finally, I argue for a cognitive anthropological conceptualization of CC, which posits the shared understanding of stereotypes among a group of people.