The competence performance distinction just mentioned is one that holds intriguing possibilities for work in linguistics, but it is one that has also proved to quite troublesome, particularly when much of the variety we experience within language is labeled performance and then put to one side by those who consider 'competence' to be the only valid concern of linguists. The language we use in everyday living is remarkably varied. In fact to many investigators it appears that it is that very variety which throw up serious obstacles to all attempts to demonstrate that each language is at its core, as it were, a homogeneous entity, and that is possible to write a complete grammar for a language which makes use of categorical rules, i.e rules which specify exactly what is and therefore what is not, possible in the language. Everywhere we turn wee seem to find at least a new wrinkle or a small inconsistency with regard to any rule we might wish to propose. When we look closely at any language, we will discover time and time again that there is considerable internal variation, and that speakers make constant use of the many different possibilities offered to them. No one speaks the same way all the time, and people constantly exploit the nuances of the languages they speak for a wide variety of purposes. The consequence is a kind of paradox ; while many linguists would like to vie any language as a homogeneous entity and each speaker of that language as controlling only a single style, so that they can make the strongest possible theoretical generalizations, in actual fact that language will exhibit considerable internal variation, and single style speakers will not be found (or, if found, will appear to be extremely abnormal in that respect, if in no other.
A recognition implies that we must recognize that a language is not just some kind of abstract study. It also something that people use. Can we really set, at any may point in our study of language, this fact of use? It is not surprising therefore that a recurring issue in linguistic in recent years has been the possible value of a linguistics that deliberately separates itself from any concern with the use, and the users of language. Following Chomsky's example, many linguists have argued that you should not study a language in use, or even how the language is learned, without first acquiring and adequate, knowledge of what language itself is. In this view linguistics investigation should focus on developing this latter knowledge. The linguist's task should be to write grammars that will help us develop our understanding of language : what it is, how it is learnable, and what it tells us about the human mind. Surveys of language use have little to offer us in such view. Many sociolinguists have disagreed arguing that an asocial linguists is scarcely worthwhile. Hudson (1980,p.19) has argued that such an asocial views is that meaningful insights into language can be gained only if such matters as use and variation are included as part of the data which must be explained in adequate linguist theory; an adequate theory of language must have something to say about the uses of language. This is view I will adopt here.
As we will see, there is considerable variation in the speech of any one individual, but there also definite bounds to that variation ; no individuals is free to do just exactly what he or she please so far as language is concerned,. You cannot pronounce words any way you please inflect or not inflect words such as nouns and verb arbitrarily or make drastic alterations in word order in sentences as the mood suits you. If you do any or all of these things, the result will be unacceptable, even gibberish. The variation you are permitted described with considerably accuracy and that they also apparently apply to group speakers , not just to individuals. That is, there are group norms so far as variation is concerned.
Moreover individuals have knowledge of the various limits (or norms) and that knowledge is both very precise and at the same time almost entirely unconscious. It also difficult to explain how individual speakers acquire a knowledge of these norms of linguistic behavior, for they appear to be muchmore subtle than the norms that apply to such matters as social behavior, dress and table manners. This is another issue to which we will return from time to time. As we will see , the task will be one trying to specify the norms of linguistic behavior in terms of these norms.
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