BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Question # 1: Explain the psychological, Semantic & Physical barriers to

Communication?
Answer:
Communication is a complete process and it requires all the possibilities that
the loop between and sender and receiver flows freely.
Flows freely means that the message that is encodes by sender and is un
intrepidly transferred to the receiver and the similarly the relevant response
from the receiver get back to the sender with no interference. Even one work
hard to convey a proper message with all the requirements and speak
effectively no one be sure the meaning and the objective of the message is
deliver and the response is achieved.
Misunderstanding, Irrelevant response and undesirable reactions are the
consequences of a failed communication exercise. Failure of effective
communication results in loss of valuable time, resource and material.
The loss of meaning which may block the communication process is often
termed as noise. As the same term is used in electronic theory, loss of
power, or other condition that can distort the signal as it travels from one
point to another.
Barriers to communications range from the simple distracting noises to the
most complex psychological factors. These barriers may cause a simple
communication gap or a total failure of communication. A communication
gap can be bridged but retrieval of a situation, damaged by
miscommunication would be rather difficult.

Shabbir Ahmad

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Moods
Moods

Psychological
Psychological
Barriers
Barriers

Relationships
Relationships

Attitude
Attitude

Sematic
Sematic
Barrier
Barrier
Communicatio
Communicatio
n
n Barriers
Barriers

Varied
Varied
Connotatiive
Connotatiive
Meanings
Meanings
Time
Time

Place
Place

space
space
Physical
Physical
barrier
barrier
Climate
Climate

Nose
Nose

Choise
Choise Of
Of
Mediium
Mediium

PSYCHOLOGIAL BARRIERS
The barriers fall under this category includes the following
1. Emotional
2. Perceptions
3. Selectivity

Shabbir Ahmad

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Emotional:
One of the possible psychological block is emotional. E.g. one must be
emotion al blocked if he /she are going to announce a new policy and he/she
knows that the policy cannot be accepted in general and refused. Or one is
asked to be prepare for the most worthy and shift-up presentation of his/her
carrier, and the most demanding when you are writing to someone whom
you dislike.
Emotional barriers are considered very important for the personality of a
person. A person is not professional in communication if he is facing such
barriers during communication. He must overcome this problem because it is
considered as gap in communication. Fear, empathy and vulnerability are
emotional barriers and can be overcome with determination.
Emotional barriers become active when a person ignores the suggestion or
idea of other one. Such person feels that he is alone in this world and no one
is here to respect his ideas. His emotions become the barrier for his
communication. Besides this, fear also plays an important role as barrier in
communication. The fear of talking to higher authority person is very
common in people. They become confuse and feel difficulty in sending their
message to him. R1
Emotional barriers create the possibility of biasness against you, perhaps
because of your youth, sex, race, relatives, friends or even your clothes.
Perceptual:
Communication can be broken when the senders intended message is
unclear or the receiver perceives it differently than the sender intended. R2
One can ignore the possibility of emotional barrier/block , must cannot deny
the perceptual barrier. Every person has different type and way to perceive
things. Even the theories of communication work and we all live in same
objective world, but where its comes to subjective part there are lot of
difference among every individual.
We all see the world differently. We all have our own preferences, values,
attitudes, origins and life experiences. Seeing things after filtering our own
unique life experiences leads to assumptions which creates perception for
our own and other as well.

Shabbir Ahmad

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
One can perceive thing different and other differently, the same bunch of
book has different thought to ne audience and different to other.
A message that is conveyed or send by sender may have different meaning
according to sender but the receiver can get and perceive it differently.
e.g. when a specific type of organizational form that si distributed among
different audience to fill. Each one has different answer to the question
written in that form because everyone has different school of thought,
though we are in same working area and condition but we perceive thing
differently.
And to the most important and the major contributor that lead to be a
perceptional barrier to communication is, how we use to perceive things,
despite of facts actual happenings. This cause the generation of certain
filters in our mind that leads us to perceive thing differently.
Selectivity:
The final set of psychological barrier exists because of competition for
peoples time and attention. We all are bombarded with information sources ,
such as newspaper, magazine, internet, TV, meeting, tutorials, electronic
mails etc. so here we cannot simple absorb all the information directly in to
us , here comes the section or selectivity.
One factor is timing, that some message that are effective at one time are
not effective at other or even useless at other, kind of just for information.
Any message that address a specific happening like a letter of congratulation
and letter of condolence address a specific happening of event, and are
effective only at that time.
e.g. a call of meeting on the concern of safety issue in construction company
has more value and attraction when there an incident because of safety lack.
Similarly there are a lot of selectiveness that can be a barrier to a
communication.
A receiver gets the message, selectively and encodes what benefit him/her
or in her/his interest and forget the rest of the message. It can be due to
experience, need and motivation that drive him/her to do so.
Here the thinking tendency, knowledge and information of the people also
involves that some of the people already knows about the issues, context
and the topic of the message.
Shabbir Ahmad

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Semantic Barrier:
Semantics is related to meanings of words. To be more exact, it is related to
connotative and denotative meanings of words and its study. Every word has
a direct meaning called the denotative meaning. In addition to its exact or
lexical meaning, words also acquire implied meanings called connotative
meanings. Connotations are understood based only on an individuals
experience and knowledge.
Words are of course are symbols, and therefore limited because they cannot
have precisely the same meaning for everyone.
The study of word choice is called semantic and thus these can a barrier to a
communication that the listener or audience to a massage interprets the
message wrongly.
If the encoder and decoder do not share the same connotative meaning of
words, misunderstanding occurs. e.g. you will enjoy a cheap holiday or
factories requires cheap labor to reduce the cost of production. The
connotation of cheap is different here.
The second thing that leads to the semantic barrier is the fluency of
language. Communication with someone whose native language is is not the
same as yours may block the communication and result in the choice of
irrelevant and inappropriate words.
Professionals often use industry jargon to communicate, and that jargon is all
but foreign to those outside the industry. A web designer, for instance, may
ask his non-Internet-savvy client for a list of meta tags. The client can
become confused and resentful, damaging efforts at communication. Slang is
also a frequent communication barrier. It regularly either invents new
meanings for common words or just new words. R3
Regional accent and low vocabulary is also a reason to semantic barrier, which lead
to miscommunication.
Physical Barriers:
Physical noise interferes with a speaker's ability to send messages and with an
audience's ability to receive them. Other physical blocks include mumbling,
speaking too fast, distracting gestures, noise inside the room such a ringing
telephones etc - or outside the building such as traffic or aero planes. Your message
may be blocked because people in your audience are uncomfortable; they cannot
hear because of bad sound system and cannot see because of inadequate lighting.
R4
Shabbir Ahmad

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Communication does not consist of words alone. Another set of barrier is caused by
your physical appearance, the audience, the topic the context of document or
presentation.
For writing there is a bunch of barriers that can influence the communication. No
matter how well you have drafted, for example a document may be illegible for
various reasons like, jammed, jagged margins, finger prints, faulty printer ink,
unclear photocopies, other spots, or messy corrections
For speaking, similar to writing number of barrier lead to inappropriate
communication and leads to be a barrier to effective communication, beside lack of
skill , mumbling, speaking too fast, using distracted gestures, noise to your
surroundings, which result in distraction of your message not completely conveyed,
like telephone ringing, outside traffic, sound of AC or fans. The same effect the your
message audience as they did not get it properly once the message is distracted.
For Listening & reading; As it turn you it to the audience but all the other
prospective are same as to writing and speaking, those factor which can influence
and be a part of barrier to effective communication as for writing can be the same
for reading and to what effect the effective speaking can also effects the listening.

Shabbir Ahmad

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