This document discusses the concept of "competence" in linguistics and related fields. It begins by explaining how Chomsky viewed linguistic competence as the mental representation underlying language use. It then discusses how the notion of competence was expanded to include social and contextual factors by scholars like Dell Hymes, who introduced the concept of communicative competence. Finally, it outlines how competence has been applied in other domains like second language acquisition, translation studies, and poetics to refer to the underlying knowledge and abilities that allow people to function in those areas.