A Communicative Competence Perspective of the Role of English as Linguistic Capital: An Analysis of the Pakistani Job Market

Abstract

In Pakistani corporate set-ups, proficiency in English is taken as competence in communication; other important aspects of communicative competence are overlooked. The research carried out so far is from the point of view of Management and Organizational Behavior and none from the linguistic perspective. The current study is an attempt to find out the relationship between English as linguistic capital as part of Communicative Competence and employees' job performance via job satisfaction and promotion in the Corporate Sector. As a theoretical framework for this study, a hybrid model has been established by combining the model of communicative competence by Celce-Murcia (2007) and the model of types of Capital by Bourdieu (1986). The model includes competence in five areas, viz. Socio-Cultural, Discourse, Linguistic, Formulaic and Interactional. To see the effect of communicative competence on the employees' performance, i.e., job satisfaction and promotion, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been used.