Barriers to Communication - Essay Example

Therefore, a racially oriented form of communication acts as a barrier to effective communication. Homophobic language has been cited as one of the barriers to effective communication. Homophobic language refers to the use of homosexual orientation language during communication (Kadushin 44-49). One of the most commonly used homophobic terms is “That’s so gay.

”The reasonable use of such homophobic language is a barrier to communication in that it is open to infinite interpretation by the other party. For instance, “your phone is so gay!” could be interpreted to mean the phone is bad or good by different people. The same phrase could also sound offensive to a gay person causing a barrier to effective communication. Sexist way of communication on the other hand tends to discriminate against one gender during communication. For instance, talking to a gender-balanced audience in a way insinuating everybody is male can be termed as sexist language.

A good example is using the term congressman to refer to the person holding the congress title without considering that it could be a lady. Such kind of communication gives the wrong message to the parties involved hence causing a barrier to effective communication.

Conclusively, effective communication calls for articulate consideration of gender, race, sex, professional, and other types of diversities. It is important for the communicator to understand the context in which the communication is made in order to eliminate these barriers to communication.