Communication
What is Communication?
Here they are...
General
Interpersonal
Written
Barriers
General communication, such as social media has been improving and is adding more and more functionality. An example is that on Facebook if a friend has written a status in a recognized foreign language the website now has a translate feature but these features need a lot of work before they can be considered anywhere useful.
General communication can also include speaking on the phone, This can be fairly awkward as its difficult to gauge the time that the other person will stop speaking and when you should speak. Interruptions on the phone can be incredibly awkward but also common, This occurs because when having a face to face conversation we gauge when we should speak by body language and eye contact. On the phone you cannot see the other person therefore you cannot pick up on the other small changes in body language making interruptions and awkward silences far more common on the phone than anything else.
Interpersonal communication can be blocked by many different reasons. A large reason could be a language barrier. When 2 people who speak different languages try and communicate they tend to rely a lot less on speech and use a lot more body language to attempt to communicate or they (especially English speaking people) will slow down their words in hopes that giving the other person a longer amount of time to think about what they said, 99% of the time this makes no difference. Body language and eye contact are huge factors in interpersonal communication. They dictate when one person begins speaking and when they are finished allowing the next person to speak but the wrong use of body language and eye contact can cause awkwardness. If you are talking to someone and they have their arms closed and they are making direct eye contact without breaking it once this person could be extremely awkward to talk to. its the exact same if they avoided eye contact the whole time, it would be extremely difficult to talk to them as its hard to gauge who speaks and when they should speak.
Written communication can be blocked or hindered by many different factors. The main reason why the desired message may not get across is usually non proper use or complete lack of grammar. The message might get across but the emotion of the message is lost. In some cases both the message and emotion can be lost. A comma being in the wrong place can completely change the meaning of the message. A example of this is "lets eat, grandma" and "lets eat grandma". Both have the same words in the same place but the lack of a comma can cause a sentence to go from fairly innocent to extremely sinister. Written communication can also be blocked or hindered by wrongly spelt words. if you have to constantly stop and re read a word on a page it can break the flow of what you are reading causing you to misread or misunderstand the message.