Communication Report: Analyzing Misunderstanding and Misinterpretation

This report examines the communication problem of misunderstanding and misinterpretation, highlighting its impact on business and interpersonal interactions. It discusses how different communication competencies and attitudes influence message interpretation, leading to potential distortions and failures. The report emphasizes the importance of pragmatic competence, including utterance interpretation and speaker meaning, to address these issues. It provides a dialogue example illustrating the challenges of misinterpretation and suggests strategies such as active listening and turn-taking to improve communication effectiveness. The author concludes by emphasizing the significance of understanding and proper interpretation for effective message transfer and successful communication outcomes. References from various communication scholars support the analysis.

Running head: COMMUNICATION 1
Communication
Student’s Name
Institution
Date

COMMUNICATION 2
Communication Problem: Misunderstanding and Misinterpretation
Based on circumstances surrounding global integration, communication plays a
significant role in human life, especially in the business platform. Every interaction in business is
conducted through information transfer, and the concept of communication is therefore entirely
relevant. According to Fisher (2011), every individual has different communication capabilities
and competencies, which bring out the issue of dynamism presented in the way individuals,
interpret and understand messages. The understanding and interpretation ability of the
communicating parties plays a significant role in the communication process (Bowe et al. 2014).
Therefore, lack of proper understanding and message interpretation leads to communication
failure.
According to Greenberg & Baron (2013), the authors point out that lack of proper
interpretation is caused by the lack of attention in the process, and can also be dictated by
education levels among participants. I believe that message misinterpretation is a communication
problem, which leads to distortion of meanings, and the overall distortion of the intended
message. For example, one party may be focused on highlighting essential concepts in a
functional unit in an organization, while the intended recipient may end up interpreting the same
as an authoritative gesture, rather than information which is passed for subsequent action to be
undertaken (Kraut et al. 2010). The attitudes of individuals also determine the way individuals
interpret messages.
A negative attitude towards the speaker is bound to interfere with the process and its
effectiveness. All forms of communication are open to interpretation and understanding. In most
cases, individuals are keen to make assumptions about the message they receive, through reading

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or hearing, which compromises the prior intention (Kraut et al. 2010). The use of nonverbal cues,
for example, is profoundly affected by generated assumptions, which in turn leads to
misunderstanding and misinterpretation of messages. For example, from an organization context,
employees who avoid eye contact may make other Course mates assume that he or she is
continually hiding some information from them, while he or she might merely be shy, or suffer
from an inferiority complex that has not yet been understood (Kraut et al. 2010).
The pragmatic concept of addressing the problem
The concept of pragmatic competence helps solve most issues in the field of communication. In
communication, two significant issues are distinct, including utterance interpretation and the
speaker meaning. Recipients have not only to understand words uttered, but also hear what is
communicated. Communicative competence is therefore emphasized in pragmatics, and the need
to further understand the use of language and how to interpret meanings (Thomas, 2013). There
is a need to balance available languages, to discover meanings, rather than rush into conclusions
in the long term. Every language has different styles of communication, and socially familiar
gestures should, therefore, be applied to enhance understanding. Different strategies can also be
applied to enhance understanding and proper interpretation of messages in the communication
process. Face to face communication is considered the most efficient, considering the immediate
feedback which is essential. Below is an example of dialogue, between me and my coursemate,
which presents the problem of misunderstanding and misinterpretation in communication.
Course mate: I heard you asked to talk to me.
Me: Yes, I meant to ask you about the status of the assignment you did last week, which seems
to have a significant problem due to the vague nature of the explanations provided.

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Course mate: Do you think I intentionally represented my discussion without re-reading the
exlanations.
Me: Not at all, I only need clarification on specific issues which I don't seem totally understand,
and I believe you can help.
Course mate: I seem to be the one blamed for evry failure in this group.
Me: You are getting me all wrong; I only need you to help all group members underdtand what
you submitted for grading, as it affects every individual.
Course mate: Of course I will, but I am going to ask for an immediate reshuffle in the roles of
every member in the group.
From this extract, it is evident that my Course mate got me all wrong. My primary
intention was to get help from her, regarding the submitted group work assignment, so that every
member could understand before it was graded. Considering that she worked at compiling the
work, I figured she would be the best person to help accurately. However, he misunderstood my
approach and considered its victimization. He went on accusing me of blaming him for the vague
presentations in the explanations and for the explanationswhich were not tallying. Due to this
misunderstanding and message misinterpretation, it became tough to get the help I wanted. I,
therefore, resulted in consulting another individual, and the relationship between me and my
Course mate has ever since been compromised (Thomas, 2013).
Pragmatic failure is considered the inability to interpret the intended meaning of a
specific utterance, which in turn, compromises the communication process. The best strategy
regarding mitigating such an aspect is to rely on proper listening and turn-taking in
communicating (Puntnam & Pacanowsky, 2013). Both parties need to be keen to ensure that the
message delivered is critically analyzed and at the same time, that the speaker and the recipient
both have ample time to speak and deliver their message. With this, it will be easier for all

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parties to express themselves, and assumptions will be eliminated. Understanding and proper
interpretation will hence be accomplished in the long run (Puntnam & Pacanowsky, 2013). Lack
of understanding and misinterpretation are the primary communication problems which I have
encountered and need to be dealt with, for the sake of effective communication process and
message transfer (Miller, 2014).

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References
Bowe, H., Martin, K., & Manns, H. (2014). Communication across cultures: Mutual
understanding in a global world. Cambridge University Press.
Bowe, H., Martin, K., & Manns, H. (2014). Communication across cultures: Mutual
understanding in a global world. Cambridge University Press.
Fisher, D. (2011). Communication in organizations (pp. 228-9). St. Paul: West Publishing
Company.
Greenberg, J., & Baron, R. A. (2013). Behavior in organizations: Understanding and managing
the human side of work. Pearson College Division.
Kraut, R. E., Fish, R. S., Root, R. W., & Chalfonte, B. L. (2010). Informal communication in
organizations: Form, function, and technology. In Human reactions to technology:
Claremont symposium on applied social psychology (pp. 145-199).
Miller, G. A. (2014). Psychology, language, and levels of communication. Human
communication: theoretical explorations, ed. by A. Silverstein, 1-17. New York: J.
Putnam, L., & Pacanowsky, M. E. (2013). Communication and organizations, an interpretive
approach (Vol. 65). Sage Publications, Inc.
Thomas, J. (2013). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied linguistics, 4(2), 91-112.