What are Linguistic Barriers?

Linguistic barriers, also called language barriers, refer to difficulties in communication that prevent people from understanding each other. They can virtually be any behaviour or mannerism that proves to be a barrier within communication.

There are a variety of factors that cause this issue including educational background, level of literacy, and the country or area of the language user.

Different Types of Barriers

There are multiple types of linguistic barriers:

Proficiency Understanding the language
Technical Use of jargon between experienced and non-experienced individuals (e.g. a patient and doctor)
Cultural Informal and formal situations
Physical Physical impediments (e.g. hearing loss and stuttering )

Migration Statistics within Australia

Statistics on the status of immigrants' language proficiency in Australia

Awareness of the Issue

We surveyed people within our own community to see if people were aware that there was an issue concerning immigrants and linguistic barriers.

We also saw that although 97.9% of people believed that immigrants faced linguistic barriers, most people judged that their awareness of linguistic barriers that immigrants faced were fairly low.

Policies

In Australia, the Racial Discrimination Act Regional Development Australia organisation protects people from racial discrimination across many fields of an individual's public life, such as in employment, education, seeking services, acquiring shelter or accessing a public place. Discrimination in the workplace is widespread, and can include enforcing that all employees speak English all the time.

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