2019-04-23
We have been studying barriers to communication and we looked into the
kinds of barriers to communication. We
discussed Perception as one kind of barrier to communication. Now, we will look
into semantic barriers to communication.
In a very simple language, semantic barrier means both the speaker and
the listener give different meanings to the same words. Obviously, in such context, with words
wrongly understood by both of them, communication cannot take place. This can
happen more in personal communication but not in business communication
generally. For examples, ‘goods yet to
receive’ cannot be misunderstood as received; so also, ‘ received’ cannot be
misunderstood as ‘not received’. The
traditional use of popular business vocabulary like bills, paid, unpaid, good received or not received, need time to dispatch the products, products dispatched, accounts settled or not
settled--- like these phrases cannot be misunderstood. Moreover, as for business English, business
communication is concerned, very clear, unambiguous expressions have been
formed and popularized such as ever wishing to continue the same friendly
relations, regret inconvenience, the issues will be at once addressed, so on.
We will talk about it later when we propose to deal with kinds of business
communication.
Semantic barriers are very common in personal experiences. The reason points to one’s attitude to life
and his convictions that guide his daily living. Still deeper, it can be seen
that conscious and unconscious likes and dislikes too influence the meanings of
the words as taken by the listener or by the speaker. One obvious example can be given taking the
most popular words of Christ, just to cite an example. His message has been ‘Love
thy neighbor as thyself.’ If only the meaning of the word ‘Love’ has been the
same both to the speaker and to the listener, wonders would have taken place;
the world would be totally different from what it is today. Emotional significance attached to the word
obviously is not the same. ‘Desire’ of
Buddha and ‘non-violence’ of Gandhi are two other good examples.
Therefore, we can say semantic barriers abound in personal and social
lives of the people; but, fortunately, it is not the case with business
communication.
We will see some more of barriers to communication in our next
session.
