HOW DOES LANGUAGE INACCURACY IN SOCIAL MEDIA SITES CAUSE COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Hello, peeps! Today I am touching on an issue that seems to be rampant in any social media that we log ourselves onto. “Words are the source of misunderstandings,” this direct quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince brings to mind a sort of clarity wherein it is common in any language as old as time for misconceptions to occur due to the parties involved not speaking the full truth or are lying through the skin of their teeth. Now, imagine if the magic of social media is combined with these lying conman’s untruths. BOOM! We have the perfect recipe for a communication breakdown! Yay!
! I suppose I have to explain what language inaccuracy actually means and why it is relevant to be a cause for a communication breakdown. Language inaccuracy refers to the lack of truth or exactness in one’s words that may lead to a failure to exchange information. Now, I know what you guys are going to say, “But, OP, what does that even mean?” Alright, sit back, relax and welcome to The Magic School Bus because essentially, this can be defined as a party not being entirely truthful or being uncertain about what they may be promoting which creates a sense of distrust among the other users and is what causes failure in understanding what it is the company is trying to sell them. A suitable example to this kind of situation is if, let’s say Company A wants to sell you t-shirts, however, they keep re-posting the advertisement with new information and differing prices. One moment, they’re selling 3 t-shirts for the reasonable price of RM 100 but not two hours later the same advertisement comes up on your dash with it saying that 3 t-shirts now cost RM 150. This creates a disparaging view of the company to the viewers as they do not know whether to trust the first advertisement or the second one. Honestly, they could be worried that if they press on the deal, they might have to pay RM200 instead including a steep service tax on the side. Nobody wants that, and I do mean nobody, not even Moth-man.
Another problem with language inaccuracy is the fact that if a company with a history of it tries to collaborate with another company, then the other company also suffers performance and popularity-wise as the loyal followers of said latter company is forced to question the integrity of the company itself. The one thing a company should NEVER do is create doubt in their customers. Repeat after me, NEVER CREATE DOUBT IN YOUR CUSTOMER if you want to still see the bank notes rolling in. Just trust me on this and if you don’t, HERE’s a really cool post on it by William Craig on Forbes. In a nutshell, today, we learnt that not staying true to your word or inconsistencies are evil and to not under any circumstances produce a sense of uncertainty in our customers unless we want to go under like a leaky submarine.