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Barriers Of Intercultural Communication

Decent Essays
Barriers to effective intercultural communication can be defined as the aspects or conditions that interfere with effective exchange of ideas or thoughts (Antos, 2011). There are many barriers to effective intercultural communication and these may occur at any stage in the communication process.
Barriers may lead to the message becoming distorted and therefore result in the risk of wasting both time and/or money, especially in an organisation, by causing confusion and misunderstanding. The following varieties of barriers keep culturally different people from understanding one another.
 Cultural stereotype
The use of cultural stereotype is the main barrier to intercultural understanding. People often enter cross-cultural interactions with preconceived notions that make it impossible to find any common ground (Jandt, 2001). This forms conceptual biases that are loaded
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 Unequal power
Unequal power is “the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed” (Hofstede, 1997, p. 28). In some cultures superiors are dependent on subordinates as consultation on a limited extent, which makes it easy and pleasant for subordinates to approach and contact their superiors. In contrast, in some cultural groups power is always centralized. Only a considerable dependence exists from subordinators to superiors.

 Different world views
People are known to be different and therefore they possess different beliefs and values about the world. This has been a hindrance to effective intercultural communication because we all see the world with a different
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