Encoding-Decoding

• Interpretation vs effects
  • Not an either/or.
  • We’re all affected by meaning. It’s just difficult to find them.
  • The way in which we find these effects is by talking to people who are making these meanings
• The role of meaning-making

So how do we interpret meanings?

• Meanings are received and made sense of via CODES
• Meanings are not force fed to us; but there are a series of predetermined (sometimes dominant meanings) that we have as choices. E.g. we make out buildings and then our buildings make us (from last class)
• There is a certain amount of determinacy. Meanings are partially determined for you.
• Anything can be a sign of something else. E.g. a red light means stop.
• There’s no way of us making sense of what the other people do without CODES
• Codes are our way of translating the material that is out there.
• Meanings are translated into our own experiences.
• Nearly all of reality is encoded by someone. When humans are making sense of things they are encoding reality, and subsequently we decode them.

Remember last week? (one-way & linear models of communication = bad)

• Mathematical models of communication, such as Shannon and Weaver’s model—i.e. sending info, that info being encoded via a channel medium and being sent to the receiver—is far too simple. It merely states encoding and doesn’t acknowledge the complex decoding process. Instead, it assumes the audience will simply take in messages as they were intended
  • There’s no way of knowing how audiences make sense of them

Hall’s model:

• Frameworks of knowledge à encoding à discourse à decoding à frameworks of knowledge

1. Frameworks of knowledge/relations of production/technical infrastructure
2. Encoding meaning structures
3. TV program as meaningful discourse, i.e. how is meaning received rather than just information
4. Decoding meaning structures
5. Frameworks of knowledge/relations of production/technical infrastructure

• There are frameworks of knowledge at encoding and decoding levels
• Audiences encode meanings as they are decoding their messages
• Audiences have to decode meanings meaningfully in order to encode
• The process of encoding is a process of production (because you are creating something)
• Reception is also a moment of production—because we create meanings & understandings
  • E.g. evaluating TV shows as good vs bad is a process of creating meaning
  • When you are creating a meaning, you are working with something already sent to you.

Great quote (Hall): if no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption’. If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect

• There is no effect if there is no reproduction of the encoded meaning

There is no intelligible discourse without the operation of a code (Hall)

• E.g. “dominant ideology”
• Dominant ideology: a movement that seeks to make its idea widely shared (i.e. dominant)
• Suggests that there is a certain sense of thinking about certain things that shape us to view it in a certain way
• Certain codes are so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and are learned at so early an age that they appear to not to be constructed (i.e. something natural, a way that the world works)—Hall says these things are constructed. They appear to be natural and not social constructions, but in essence there are certain groups in society that can make their meanings appear to be natural

So, some meanings appear to be “natural” & “universal”

• By which we mean generalized as common sense within some culture or social group
• There will be certain assumptions that will guide the way you are expected to think.
• If there are certain assumptions, we can think of that as being a dominant ideology
• Dominant ideologies are those which already seem generalized and natural
• Hall asks how does the media assist in constructing and disseminating this dominant ideology
  • Example of a dominant ideology: the theory of evolution; another is heterosexuality—the dominant ideology (straight couples & the church) reacts when their ideology is challenged (via same-sex couples)
• The ways in which we perceive things can sometimes be done almost as ‘autopilot‘ à our perceptions of the world are based on our acceptance. We don’t consciously decode everything.
• Media would love to operate in the sense that the only way of audiences seeing their product was the way they wanted you toà but it doesn’t actually work this way
• Ideologies are always encoded in texts; encoding carries the meaning to be given—the meaning that you want our audience to receive
• Decoding is the meaning that you hope is actually taken out of it—meanings that you hope are received
• The power of the producer to encode meanings is greater than the power of the audience to decode
  • Audiences only have the power to decode what they are given whereas encoders are in the position of giving it to you

The media do not “transcribe” reality

• Remember last week?
  Primary & secondary signification…= Denotation & Connotation
• Primary signification is denotation – it is a literal thing. E.g. a picture of the white house depicts the white house
• Connotation is secondary signification – it is the meanings that we connote to it (white house=president=I don’t like the president)
• There’s no such thing as universal meaning. Even when you’re encoding certain things, there’s always going to be associated meanings with it. There’s no pure meaning to it.
• When you see a picture of a pipe: one person says “it’s a pipe“; the next person says “it’s a picture of a pipe”
  • When someone sees the pipe, they think of their grandfather who always used to smoke a pipe, as well recalling the smell of the pipe. No one else would share this with you
  • Essentially, there are few instances where signs express only their literal meanings
  • All messages have different messages for different audiences
• At the denotative level, signs are generally “fixed”
• But the audiences can actively transform the meanings of things at the connotation level. Audiences are always making sense of things at this level. Ultimately, meanings aren’t always determined at the level of production, audiences can always attribute different meanings

But there are limits to polysemy

• All societies try to encode their preferred ways of seeing things. They classify the world the way they see it. E.g. Slavery is bad, sexism is bad, racism is bad…these are expressions of the dominant cultural order in society.
• There is polysemy, there is the production of multiple meanings, but there are still dominant ideologies that exist.

The goal of (most) communicators is “transparent communication”

• Most communicators want the meanings they produce to be the meanings you receive

Meaning is produced by endless, symbolic exchanges within a dominant code (Baudrillard, 1988)

• We produce meanings in conversation with everything that has been produced by others
• There’s no such thing as misunderstanding. Right or wrong interpretations are only right or wrong from the point of the producer. When the producer acknowledges that people don’t get the message they wanted audiences to receive, they don’t have transparent communication. Thus, there are no successful/unsuccessful messages. People decode messages according to their points of view.

Hall’s 3 “reading positions“: 3 decoding options the reader’s of texts have. This tells us why we have dominant ideology and polysemy at the same time.

• Dominant hegemonic: this position is when you reproduce the dominant ideology. Because humans think for themselves often, the negotiated position is the most common position for audiences
• Negotiated: a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements. Neither mindless automations nor completely autonomous. i.e. in the dominant receiving position we just take in messages, in negotiated we don’t accept every single thing.
  • E.g. 24 is a good show, but there are certain things that annoy me. I don’t reject the show, I accept the way in which reality is encoded for me. But there still exists things I don’t agree with.
• Oppositional: texts are decoded in a “globally contrary” fashion. The oppositional position states that we can resist messages from the text.
  • States that we can understand the message (i.e. decode it properly) but you don’t accept the message (i.e. you decode it in a different fashion)

Hillary Clinton is a great case study of different decodings

• The media constructs her image, and these images are decoded by audiences
• Brown (an author) notes that “meaning construction does not stop with the moment of the consumption of text“à we consume messages of Hillary and then we respond to them in different ways
  • No one agrees on what Hillary stands for; there is a divide between the people who love her (dominant) and people who hate her (oppositional)

Hillary Clinton disrupts the “preferred reading” of “women“?

• Women are seen in public life as ‘fashion models’—i.e. in fashion magazines. This is the dominant code.
• Preferred reading is the dominant hegemonic position.
• She also disrupts the preferred reading of politician—she’s a women and a feminist.

To review:

• Meaning extends beyond the moment of the production and the moment of consumption of texts…
• Audiences can take one of 3 reading positions
  • Producers want transparent communication, but audiences tend to use negotiated reading
  • Oppositional readings take a lot of work. We have to be highly motivated to challenge and reject meanings, so oftentimes we just negotiate meanings
• By admitting audiences have a capability to respond differently, it means that they can exert some control over the communication process. Not everyone who sees Michael Moore documentaries will agree with them.
• Everything is open for interpretation—there are no “wrong” interpretations (but some are better than others)
• Hegemony is never complete—”dominant” understandings can never be guaranteed.
  • Hegemony is always ‘leaky’. Dominant ideology doesn’t always work.
  • Resistance can also never be guaranteed. Resistance also isn’t futile, but it always occurs in a world of asymmetrical power relations. The audience can resist against dominant meanings, but there is always a dominant ideology being pushed down on you.
  • Attempts to manipulate people to a certain meaning are always going to extend beyond original meanings. Producers can never control how audiences interpret.