Mechanical barriers:

• Many mechanical factors are responsible for breakdown in communication process. Use of defective communication device affects the transmission and reception of message.

• Faulty instruments give rise to mechanical barriers to communication.

• Also many people lack adequate knowledge and skills to use modern communication technology like computer, internet, video conferencing etc. Lack of knowledge to handle the instruments may create barriers to communication.

• If too many messages are jammed into a network at the same time, there might be a problem in transmission.

• Electrically generated devices used in communication are only useful if there is a steady source of power. Any power failure may cause mechanical communication barrier.

Mechanical barriers are unhealthy in organization as they interrupt the continuous flow of communication between speaker and receiver.

Linguistic/Semantic barriers:

• Language can act as major barrier to communication.

• Illiterate people cannot read and write the message. This creates difficulty in understanding the thoughts and emotions of the speaker and writer.

• Overuse of technical jargon and scientific terms can make it difficult for the people to understand the thoughts of the speaker.

• Use of slang or other informal varieties of language makes it difficult for the strangers to understand what the speaker is speaking and what he is asking for.

• Grammatical errors in writing and structural errors while speaking are major barrier to communication.

• Message can be distorted or misunderstood by the reader because of printing mistakes in the text which is also called as “errata”.

Such kinds of barriers can cause serious breakdown between sender and receiver during successful flow of communication.