Language potentials of communicative competence for Community Development

Community Development may cover various aspects of life, but in general it is intended to improve the mental, spiritual, and material welfare of the society. One of the aspects that needs developing is the cognitive maturity. People should develop rational, efficient, and polite behavior in order to establish social prosperity. All these can be achieved through the improvement of linguistic behavior. This paper attempts to explore some of the characteristic potentials of language competence which are relevant with the effort of developing community life. Communicative competence, which could be developed of the community, assumes the recognition of and compliance with social norms, honesty, efficiency, politeness, all of which are crucial parts of civilization reflected and manifested in terms of both linguistic and social behaviors. Therefore, one of the efforts of community development can be made through the improvement of communicative competence.