Barriers to communication

David Dickson

pp. 84-132

in: Ann Long (ed), Interaction for practice in community nursing, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Communication is, without doubt, the great forte of Homo sapiens. As a species we are unrivalled in the sophistication of the system that we use to engage with others. By means of language we can discuss happenings at this point in time on the other side of the planet; we can speculate about things that might happen at some distant point in the future; we can debate events that took place in the dim and distant past; we can exercise our imagination over things that might never happen. No other species has the communicative wherewithal to allow members to do these things. Their communications are very much about the concrete reality of the here and now (Pinker, 1994).