Knowledge 3 :sx acknowledging and sharing the courtesies of the game , such as how long to wait between moves , whether or not to talk , move about , how seriously to take it , what to do if a piece gets lost , whether or not to penalise one another if a move is retracted .sx And so on .sx Knowledge 4 :sx how to play with skill .sx In chess , as in all games many of those who play don't play very well , hence the prevarications :sx 'Yes I play but not very well' or 'I don't really play' or 'I know how to play' .sx Knowledge 2 may be less clear since the pieces may be quite new to the claimant .sx However , since s/he knows what sorts of pieces to expect ( two bishops , eight pawns and so on ) , even if the pieces in this new set are distinguished only by colours s/he will very quickly identify them for what they represent , and will also be able to negotiate with the inviting player who may have begun with a different piece identification .sx That doesn't matter as long as they agree as to which object stands for which piece in the game .sx So much for the rules :sx without the knowledges indicated above , playing a game of chess would not be possible .sx If the two players have different ideas about which moves may be made , in which order or which piece stands for what , then there can only be chaos or randomness , or of course total and instant victory for one side .sx 5.6 Describing the four kinds of Knowledge .sx Knowledge 1 , in spite of what has just been said , is a form of convention .sx Rules may in fact be formalised conventions , whether they are the operations of a computer or a motor or the rules of a nation state or the rules of a game , but once fixed they cease to be conventions ( or thought of as conventions ) and become law-like .sx Rules may originate in conventions but they must then be elevated above conventions in order for the game to proceed at all .sx Knowledge 2 may appear to be more convention-like than rule - like but as we shall see later it is safer to regard it as rule-like .sx Of course , like Knowledge 1 it takes its origin in convention , in tacit agreement as to what shape indicates which piece :sx this is the Queen , this the King , Bishop and so on .sx But although at the outset which counts as which is immaterial , as time goes on the player forgets that it was only a convention and for him/her the connection between the object and the chess piece becomes unquestionable .sx Of course the new player may find this uncomfortable ( and if s/he doesn't know chess incomprehensible ) but will readily accept the distribution of object to piece because this is what s/he expects .sx Knowledge 2 like Knowledge 1 draws on a set of routines and their combinations in skilled and planning ways , leaving the neophyte lost because s/he does not understand what or why it is happening , and still puzzling the learning chess player .sx Knowledge 3 is more obviously conventional and overlaps with very local arrangements which can be negotiated separately for each chess encounter .sx No doubt in some cases the types of convention listed here ( for example how long to wait between moves , talking , moving about , whether or not to allow a retraction of a move ) are more rule-like and may indeed be governed by a rule book just like Knowledge 1 and 2 .sx But other aspects of Knowledge 3 , for example how seriously to take it , whether to bet on a game , how generously to interpret the 'rules' and whether to behave sympathetically to one's opponent - these features of behaviour must be left to individuals .sx Indeed the problem with Knowledge 3 is that it tends to spread over into very personal and quite individual characteristics like how often to smile during a game , whether to eat , smoke , drink .sx These move beyond even the negotiated interpersonal and local , becoming wholly idiosyncratic .sx Knowledge 4 is of a different order .sx It is possible to say , in answer to the question we first asked , 'Yes , I play chess' .sx But that does not imply well or badly .sx Modesty normally requires a simple answer without qualification :sx or rather the unmarked form would be 'I play , but not very well' , whereas 'Yes I play' could mean I play very well indeed .sx Modesty here is conventional except in the Stephen Potter gamesmanship ploys which deliberately downplay beyond the reach of modesty , for example 'Do you play chess ?sx ' - 'Hardly at all' , meaning 'Yes I'm a Grandmaster !sx ' .sx But Knowledge 4 is really about level of skill and the point we must make is that this is a quite separate attribute from Knowledges 1-3 :sx Knowledges 1-3 are required for chess players .sx Knowledge 4 is not required in the same way .sx Knowledge 4 is of course necessary to some modest degree .sx To take a different sort of game , to have only Knowledge 1-3 for tennis is of no value if you are invited to join a friend on the tennis court for a game since you will not find it possible to translate your knowledges into some kind of performance , however low level .sx Knowing the rules of tennis ( or of chess ) is no guarantee ( indeed no assurance of any kind ) of being able to play the game for real .sx The game analogy helps in two ways .sx First , it indicates the distinction between performance and competence .sx Performance ( in chess , tennis , games , - and language ) means putting into action Knowledge 1-3 , that is playing the game , producing , using the language .sx There are , of course , different levels of performance and I will return to these .sx Second , it indicates that what the performance shows ( for the moment , again , leaving aside its level of skill ) is the extent of the informing Knowledges 1-3 , whether the player or user knows the rules ( Knowledge 1 ) , is familiar with their representation ( Knowledge 2 ) and observes the interactional courtesies ( Knowledge 3) .sx What Knowledge 4 of course indicates brings me to the heart of the 'how well do you play ?sx ' question .sx First of all let me dispense with the explicit fallacy .sx Just as Knowledges 1-3 may be present without Knowledge 4 , so that the player or user knows in theory but can't in practice , so Knowledge 4 may be present alone , the player can play or use but is not able to explain this understanding in terms of Knowledges 1-3 .sx In both cases we probably need to suspend disbelief and assume , given subjective normality , that the unpractised player who has Knowledges 1-3 can through practice articulate Knowledges 1-3 ; and similarly the player or user who has Knowledge 4 can acquire Knowledges 1-3 .sx However , this need not be the case both ways .sx Knowledges 1-3 are possible for armchair players who never acquire or articulate Knowledge 4 .sx In the reverse case we know that Knowledge 4 is possible with no explicit Knowledges 1-3 .sx Of course we assume that Knowledges 1-3 must implicitly underlie Knowledge 4 , that is that no-one can play chess or tennis or another game , without some knowledge of the rules , the moves , the conventions and the courtesies .sx Even more interesting in terms of Knowledge 4 is the threshold question .sx Should I assume that Knowledge 4 necessarily requires knowing not to play skilfully ?sx No doubt we do make major distinctions among players , we provide hierarchies and championships and honours , we choose teams and we ( probably ) distinguish even when choosing opponents ourselves .sx And yet although this is common and indicates an important aspect of game knowledge it is not , I suggest , necessary .sx We can all be chess players however badly we play , ( although there is one caveat which is that we do need to have some small acquaintance with Knowledges 1-3 .sx ) Knowledge 4 is paradoxically less necessary .sx Some modicum is necessary , but no more than a limited amount .sx Perhaps in addition to the possession of Knowledges 1-3 there also needs to be some motivation to develop Knowledge 4 .sx The point of the analogy should now be obvious .sx Knowledges 1-3 have to do with competence , Knowledge 4 with a combination of performance and proficiency ; and what the performance of Knowledge 4 demonstrates in illustrating levels of proficiency is precisely the extent to which Knowledges 1-3 have been internalised .sx 5.7 Knowledges and language .sx Let me now move back from the game analogy to language , indicating the parallels of Knowledges 1-4 and , relating in each case , the different kinds of knowledge available to the fugitive native speaker I am attempting to capture .sx I must say , first of all , that , as with all analogies , the parallels between games and language do not easily hold up .sx Nevertheless , I will make whatever connections are possible and , when necessary , point to the discrepancies .sx Metalinguistic knowledge .sx Knowledge 1 is metalinguistic knowledge , knowledge about the language .sx Native speakers may or may not have this explicit knowledge though it is customary to say that they have internalised it in some sense .sx What it means is the ability to talk about the language , to know and describe in however elementary a way , the parts of the sentence , to have some awareness , which can inform discussion , of accent , style , register , linkages in discourse and so on .sx But Knowledge 1 in language refers more importantly to a manipulative ability with these structures , to be able to put together sounds , intonation , stressing , rhythm , sentences , discourses , registers , styles , perhaps within a very limited range ( especially at above sentence levels) .sx Notice that we are teetering here on the very edge of rule-governed behaviour ( and are already moving into the arena of Knowledge 2 and Knowledge 3) .sx Knowledge 1 involves having the construction ability to assemble the parts of common sentence types or texts and to recognise them receptively as meaning bearing whether or not they are understood .sx What matters crucially then is a recognition of language use as being an exemplification or realisation of the structural resource which they do have control over .sx Of course this is a strong argument in support of the centrality of grammar :sx it assumes that all language use is a particular , local or contextual adaptation of the grammar .sx As I will show , the power of the local or contextual is not so easily dismissed .sx But for the moment , to use another analogy , it is generally accepted that skills are transferable in activities such as reading , ( whatever script is used , given constancy of code ) or driving a car , whatever intricacies and developments the car may have , or farming , medicine and so on .sx In all such cases there are constants , the important core remains and what changes is how to use that core .sx Similarly with language :sx the grammar of any one 'language' remains quite ( if not fully ) impermeable to change but what uses it is put to vary , with time and demand .sx Discriminating knowledge .sx Knowledge 2 , which I will call discriminating knowledge , enables the native speaker to recognise what counts or what does not count as being part of the language .sx There are perhaps three aspects to this , none of them foolproof for reasons discussed earlier in connection with the L1-L2-FL ( Foreign Language ) relation , that is that any one native speaker is vastly limited in what s/he knows of his/her own language , but it does include a recognition ability of the rote kind of idiom , metaphor and so on .sx However , given those constraints , I propose these three attributes to Knowledge 2 .sx First , the native speaker knows what is his/her language and what is not ( it's English , say , not French) .sx Second , the native speaker knows that a sentence/text/sound could be his/her language but it doesn't sound quite right .sx It belongs elsewhere but is not somehow familiar ; in other words it must belong to some other dialect .sx Even if in my idiolect :sx 'term starts again on Monday already' is not possible I recognise that it is possible in some idiolects of English .sx Third , the native speaker knows that a new word or expression , one that s/he has not heard before or even one that s/he chooses to invent 'belongs' to the language .sx