Shortfalls Of Communication Essay

Among the many changes the world we live in is undergoing is the way we communicate with each other, either as individuals or on a more major scale. Nowadays, we can send a quick text message or email to one another, we can talk to someone in a different country, on a different continent using the internet, and there are now so many resources available to us to learn new languages unlike anything we’ve ever had before. One might think that because of this, humans are becoming closer as a species, but that isn’t necessarily true. Despite this major improvement in communication, there are still many shortcomings in the way we relate to one another. Here, I am going to show how communication works and the improvements to it that have been aforementioned, where they fall short, but also how I believe that the improvements in communication can catch up to the

After all, I just mentioned that we have so many more ways to communicate to one another, even ways to learn the languages of other countries with ease. When I say there are shortfalls in communication, I don’t mean we can’t understand the words being communicated to us. No, in reality, it is the meaning in those words that is getting lost in translation. You can use the Rosetta Stone to learn new languages till the cows come home, but no matter how much time you spend studying a language, the meaning is not able to be as easily translated as the words that contain them. Dean Barnlund puts it very well in his essay, “Communication in a Global Village”. “It is differences in meaning, far more than mere differences in vocabulary, that isolate cultures, and that cause them to regard each other as strange or even barbaric.” Even though humans may be able to “understand” each other, their understanding may go no further than the words being said. In intercultural communication, the meaning tends to get easily lost in the