Barriers to Communication

Barriers to Communication
• Physical (time, environment, comfort, needs, physical medium)
• Cultural (ethnic, religious, and social differences)
• Perceptional (viewing what is said from your own mindset)
• Motivational (mental inertia)
• Experiential (lack of similar experience)
• Emotional (personal feelings at the moment)
• Linguistic (different languages or vocabulary)
• Non-verbal (non-word messages)
• Competition (noise, doing other things besides listening)
• Words (we assign a meaning to a word often because of culture -- note the difference in the meaning of "police" (contrast Berrien Springs versus Benton Harbor or any inner city perspective) or "boy" (contrast white male with black male perspectives)
• Context (high / low)
• Purpose (example: note the difference in communication between men versus women; for men it's report-talk versus rapport-talk or information versus bonding
• Mode (differences in way a message is sent). Note the black versus white modes: Black White
High keyed
Argument
Spontaneous
Boasting
Person Oriented Low keyed
Discussion
Controlled / Self-Restrained
Understanding
Task Oriented
Blacks perceive whites as detached, devious, impersonal, condescending, hypocritical, avoiding eye contact, and too silent Whites perceive blacks as aggressive, over-emotional, angry, confrontational, interruptive, too personal, showboating
• Gestures (misunderstood gestures are a major barrier see discussion on non-verbal language)
• Variations in language – accent, dialect
• Slang - jargon - colloquialism
• Different forms or reasons for verbal interaction
Dueling – seeing who can get the upper hand (playing the dozens)
Repartee conversation – taking short turns rather than monologue
Ritual conversation – standard replies with little meaning to words themselves (i.e. most US greetings)
Self-disclosure. The level of self-disclosure is culturally determined. Not all cultures wish to give personal information; some want to do business without knowing the other person while others insist on full knowledge first.

Linguistic

Linguistic is the natural language. The study of meaning (semantic and pragmatic).
Linguistics is narrowly defined as the scientific approach to the study of language, but language can be approached from a variety of directions, and a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to it and influence its study.