Question

Explain how semantic differences can affect intercultural communication. Give some examples?

Answer 1

In an organisation,there are people from different cultures,religion,country,gender.In other words ,there is an diversity of workforce in today's organisation especially Multi national Companies and it is quiet obvious that there could be some problems in communication ,to be specific there will be some barriers of communication .

it is the responsibility of HR manager to ensure that there is a smooth flow of communication between workforce,i.e there is no discrimination on account of sex,religion,country etc.if this problem /issue still persist then the organisation will not be able to accomplish the goal as the people are not willing to interact with each other.Therefore,this problem has to be addressed immediately without any delay.

Semantic differences i.e differences in language could affect the intercultural communication as people speaking different language in same organisation will lead to misunderstanding as people would not understand each other language and as a result people would derive different meaning for the word and it would ultimately affect the work.For example ,if there are two people in the same department ,one speaks Spanish and other one speak Hindi ,they both don't understand each others language as a result,if one ask him/her to provide the details of the client and analyze the case,the other one could not understand what he said as a result he failed to provide the details and analyze the task.Here what suffer is their work.

Therefore,in order to avoid these differences ,one common language should prevail in order to smoothen the communication process for example,if it is a US based company ,then it is preferable to speak English within the organisation .