The the video "I Know Nothing!-Faulty Towers-BBC", there is an obvious failure in communication between two people. The man on the left wishes for the man who is presumably his butler to act as though he knows nothing about a certain horse. The butler, however, believes the man is talking down to him; saying he "knows nothing"; and strings the conversation along under that pretext.
In this scenario there are many barriers to communication. The first is a semantic, connotative barrier where the man selects words that could be understood differently in a different context: "You know nothing". This could also categorize as a cultural barrier to communication as, in our culture, that phrase implies something in the way of: "Please act like you know nothing about whatever is about to be spoken of, I need to keep a secret"; whereas, the butler's understanding of this from his linguistic ability and culture, the phrase means "You are ignorant". This understanding leads into the next barrier which is psychological in nature; the butler becomes defensive and less responsive to the man. Further on in the video, there is another barrier erected as the man uses ambiguous word choice which is not understood by the butler: "The horse", "Which horse?". Also, the English colloquial term "nit wit" is understood by the butler to be the name of the horse, while, in fact, he is the one being referenced as a nit wit. Lastly, the butler continues to misunderstand the mans desire to command as various statements of fact when the man says "forget about the horse". Overall, we can see in a rather dramatic fashion that there are certain patterns of speech which aid or completely halt the process of communication.
References
Mishra, Sneha. (2016). Models of communication. Retrieved from:
https://www.businesstopia.net/communication on Oct. 26 2016
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