Abstract
Communication is an interactive process of transmitting messages among people through verbal or nonverbal ways. It plays an important role in both daily life and workplace. Moreover, population aging has been a global trend, and Taiwan has also been an aging society since 1993. Therefore, issues related to elderly are becoming important. However, previous studies related to elderly communication mainly focused on issues discussing healthcare and doctor-patient communication, fewer studies investigate intergenerational communication regarding the elderly. This study expects to put focus on the daily speech communication between elder and younger people to investigate the communication barriers and the causes between different generations. The study integrated both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data through questionnaires and interviews, and then analyzed and generalized the communication barriers and the causes between elder and younger people. The results showed that communicators’ generation had significant influence on their perceptions of communication appropriateness and satisfaction between self and others. Young generation tended to thought others performed better then self no matter which generation the target communicators were. This might due to some characteristics in Chinese culture, like humbleness, respects, and lack of self-confidence. Besides, there were eleven factors that might result in communication barriers being extracted from interviews. All factors were generalized in to five categories, which were other centred, self centred, inability to achieve communicative goals, lack of interaction and connection, and others. Different generation perceived different situation as causes of barriers. Barriers from young perspectives were: paying respect to elders so that forcing themselves to enjoy the communication, and elders always being too talkative and holding on their own views. While the elders thought the main barriers between two generations were their difference in knowledge and opinions, and the young also holding on their own views. This study found some barriers and different perspectives between young and elder generations, and proposed some suggestions for good intergenerational communication. Future research can further investigate the strategies to minimize the intergenerational communication barriers, and enhance conversational quality and satisfaction.