ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Communicating in business
A finance manager emails a team a detailed new expense policy full of technical accounting jargon. Several staff misinterpret it because they do not know the terms. Which type of communication barrier is this mainly?
This is a semantic or language barrier. The meaning is lost because the sender used technical jargon that the receivers could not decode correctly. It is not about physical noise, time zones or channel, since the email was delivered but misunderstood.
- APhysical noise barrier
- BSemantic (language) barrierCorrect
- CDistance barrier caused by time zones
- DBarrier caused by a lack of an agreed channel
Explanation
Misunderstanding caused by technical jargon the receivers do not know is a language or semantic barrier, because the meaning is lost in encoding and decoding. Nothing in the scenario points to noise, time zones or channel choice, which would be physical or technical barriers.
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