A foreigner is arriving to a new country or region.

Undoubtedly, he faced
contains because of a new language and culture. As he was walking along
different places, he could see people who seem to be very friendly and
greeted him. He heard people uttering a word that apparently meant hello.
The man looked kind of confident and responded the locals by raising his hat.
There was an association of the phrase with the gestures, and he kept
greeting back while walking. Nonetheless, when he got to the hotel, he heard
the same word in a different context because he sees an angry worker
shouting the same words. The worker confused the tourist who got
disappointed as he thought he had misinterpreted the utterance.
Firstly, communicative competence is the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately
to accomplish communication goals. The strip shows a foreigners desire to negotiate meaning
to understand what the utterance stood for. In addition, negotiation is a foremost componet to
be able to communicate effectively. The man in the comic, therefore, was not communicative
competent because he failed to communicate properly. He assumed the meaning of that word
instead of negotiating it with the people from that foreign culture.
Communicative competence is made up of different competence areas such as: linguistic,
sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.So, (Joconda Hallo Vargas 18/10) when we negotiate
meaning we are also developing our communicative competence. We learn how and when to use
the utterances appropriately, considering not only the linguistic knowledge but the social factor
as well.
When we talk about these two concepts we must contextualize the language. In the comic, a
man arrives to a new place, a place with different customs, culture and language. For
contextualizing and communicating, we need to know aspects related to that context and
background (negotiation) in order to avoid any misunderstandings.
Dell Hymes argues that speakers of a language have to have more than grammatical
competence in order to be able communicate effectively in a language; they also need to know
how language is used by members of a speech community to accomplish their purposes and in
the comic we can see clearly that the man never tried to know or negotiate the language used in
the new place he was visiting (Joconda Hallo Vargas 18/10)
Negotiation is necessary between the two people to be able to communicate effectively. We
could say that the man in the comic is not communicative competent because he was not able to
communicate properly as he just assumed the meaning of that word instead of negotiating it
with the people from that foreign culture.