Factors preventing understanding

Sometimes participants in the communicative process use a conscious strategy of hampering or preventing understanding. This strategy comes in two varieties. The speaker can speak in a way that keeps outsiders from understanding: secret languages. Besides this, speakers can use a language (or language variety) in any situation, regardless of whether or not the fellow interlocutor knows this language. Such a strategy is related to the need for identity. For instance, in Belorussia some nationalistically-minded people choose to speak only Belorussian even with monolingual Russian speakers. In doing this, they emphasize the prestige of Belorussian even though it increases the difficulty in communicating.