The symbols for communicating are im;perfect, and so are our best communication efforts:

We often take for granted that the language we use has dependable, stable meanings. But there is no intrinsic relationship between any symbols, including words, and what they are being used to represent. As the semanticist Alfred Korzybski wrote, “The map is not the territory.” Instead, the connection between words and reality depends on social convention. If enough people agree that a word will have a certain meaning. Then it will until new social influences cause the meaning to change. But even at their most stable, words are crude substitutes for the real thing.
The word family can stand for many different kinds of human connections; Cultural differences can cause drastic variations in terminology and the assumed meanings of words. Even more problematic is that two people can use the same word but mean entirely different things. For example, what does the word liberal mean? Or fairness? How about teamwork or boss? The meanings with which people fill these verbal slots can vary enormously in connotation and even denotations. When communicators are unbeknown st to themselves using the same term but with very different meanings, they are experiencing a form of ms communication known as “bypassing.” Being alert to the slippery nature of the linkage between words and things can help you avoid such communication problems.
Managing the tenuous connection between symbols and what they represent is not your only challenge, however. Virtually every significant communication task that you will face will involve assessing a unique configuration of factors that requires at least a somewhat unique solution. This means that there is no one right answer to a communication problem. Different people will handle different cases somewhat differently, depending on who they are, how they interpret the situation, and who they imagine their recipients to be.