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sender and receiver understand these barriers. Physical barriers often occur in business, necessitating long-
distance communication methods without the benefit of seeing reactions. Language and cultural barriers are also
common as the world has expanded with better connectivity. Other barriers include distractions, stereotypes,
and even a lack of confidence on part of sender as well as the receiver.
Thus, communication barrier is anything that prevents us from receiving and understanding the messages of
others.

Types of Communication Barriers
During communication, the barriers of communication are consciously or unconsciously erected either by the
receiver or the sender. These barriers impede the communication and sometimes even lead to awkward silence.
Some barriers to effective communication are:

Attitudinal Barriers

It is tough to communicate with people who refuse to explore different points of view, opinions, or ideas about
the world. We must be able to get along with people of different viewpoints to function even at a basic level with
other people.

Language Barriers

When the sender and the receiver of the message do not follow the same language, then language becomes a
barrier in communication. This not only applies to actual languages, but also expressions, format used, buzz
words, and other jargon. For example, sometimes a technical person who speaks too many technical terms
communicates with the person who is a layman, will not be able to convey correct message due to language
incompetency.

Gender Barriers
The style of communication between males and females is different. The speech pattern of a man is different
from a woman. Even their way of communication is different from one another. While women emphasise
politeness, empathy, and rapport building, men often like to communicate in a direct manner. Men talk in a
linear, logical, and compartmentalised way. Men exhibit features of left-brain thinking, while women talk more
freely mixing logic and emotions featuring both sides of the brain.

Ambiguity Barriers

If the message is not clear and expressed in a poor way then there may be difficulty of understanding or
explaining something. The sender may resort to ambiguous or confusing signals. The receiver may mess up the
message owing to inattention or may spoil decoding because of wrong or unexpected interpretation.
The meaning of a word is in the mind of the sender and also in that of the receiver. But it is not always necessary
for the meaning in the mind of the sender to be the same as in the mind of the receiver. Much, therefore, depends
on how the sender encodes his message.
The sender has to take care that the receiver does not misconstrue his message, and gets the intended meaning.
It can be ensured only if we aim at clarity, simplicity, and brevity so that the receiver gets the intended meaning.

Cultural Barriers
Cultural differences often come up as communication barriers. We have to be especially careful in this regard as
now we have to operate in international environment. The same category of words, phrases, symbols, actions,
colours mean different things to people of different countries or different cultural backgrounds.
For example, in the United States, people love to be called by their first names while in Britain, and to a large
extent in India also, people like to be addressed by their last name. In the North American states a sign of ‘O’

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