A production manager asks a supervisor, ‘What is the value of this new machine to our unit?’ The supervisor reports the price of the machine. The manager wanted to know how useful the machine is in the daily work of the unit. Both are proper uses of the word ‘value’.
Which semantic barrier is seen here?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Symbols with different meanings
Option (1) Technical jargon — Incorrect. This barrier arises when specialists use technical words with persons outside their field. ‘Value’ is an everyday word.
Option (2) Badly expressed message — Incorrect. A message is badly expressed when the sender has a poor vocabulary, uses wrong words or leaves out needed words. The manager’s question is complete and correctly worded.
Option (3) Faulty translations — Incorrect. This barrier arises when a message is translated into another language by someone who does not know both languages well. No translation takes place here.
Option (4) Symbols with different meanings — Correct. A word may have several meanings, and the receiver has to pick one of them. The manager used ‘value’ to mean usefulness, but the supervisor took it to mean price. The receiver picked a different meaning of the same word, so the message went wrong.
NCERT (2026-27 Edition): “Semantic barriers: Semantics is the branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words and sentences. Semantic barriers are concerned with problems and obstructions in the process of encoding and decoding of message into words or impressions. Normally, such barriers result on account of use of wrong words, faulty translations, different interpretations, etc. These are discussed below: |