To explain some of the problems and questions concerning the study of communicative competence, this paper discusses observations that motivate activity in the area and several issues generated by the observations, and suggests implications of the issues raised. The observations discussed first are that humans manage to get things done communicatively in ways that differ from those of other animals, and that some people are consistently effective communicatively, while others are consistently ineffective. The issues discussed are the difficulties in defining effective and ineffective communications and communicators, the role of intentionality, general and specific models, knowledge versus performance, and how to locate communicative competence. Several of the implications mentioned in the paper are the difficulties in measuring communicative competence in normal situations, the problems in making judgments regarding exactly what competent communication is, and the need to trace and devote time to questions of developmental communications. (CRH)