Glossary
Semantic Noise
What is semantic noise?
Semantic noise is interference with a message's meaning. The words can arrive perfectly intact while the recipient understands something different from what the sender intended.
For example, someone might interpret a technical term in its everyday sense. The problem is the meaning, not a dropped signal or a broken microphone.
Semantic noise examples
Ambiguous words, unfamiliar jargon, and different conventions can leave sender and recipient with different meanings. “Positive” can sound encouraging in everyday conversation while referring simply to a detected result in a test. The same word has arrived; its interpretation differs.
Some further examples:
- Jargon: a report describes an organ as "unremarkable", meaning the radiologist saw nothing concerning in that area. A patient may read the word as dismissive.
- Words with two meanings: "biweekly" can mean twice a week or every two weeks. A team that agrees to a "biweekly" meeting can end up with two different calendars.
- Regional usage: in British English, to "table" a proposal means to put it on the agenda. In American English, it usually means to set it aside.
- Date formats: 03/04 is March 4 in the United States and 3 April in much of Europe.
In each case the words or numbers arrive exactly as sent. The sender and the recipient attach different meanings to them.
How to reduce semantic noise
Define unfamiliar terms, supply the context that determines their meaning, and ask the recipient to explain what they understood. Their response can reveal a mismatch. Repeating the same wording more loudly does not resolve a difference in meaning.
The curse of knowledge can make it difficult for an expert to recognize which terms need explanation.
Semantic noise vs technical noise
Warren Weaver distinguished semantic problems from technical transmission noise in his 1949 account of communication. His proposed extension of the theory treated distortion of meaning separately from errors in sending a signal.
Semantic noise and other kinds of noise
Introductory communication textbooks sort noise into a few kinds. Communication in the Real World (University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing, 2016), for example, describes these three:
| Kind of noise | What interferes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental (physical) noise | Something in the surroundings disrupts the message | Other people talking in a crowded restaurant |
| Psychological noise | The recipient's thoughts or feelings get in the way | Worry about bad news intrudes while someone tries to listen |
| Semantic noise | The message arrives, but a word or symbol is not understood as intended | A word with several meanings, or an autocorrected word |
Semantic noise specifically concerns how a message is interpreted. In practice, the categories can overlap.