Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The terms encoding and decoding are keywords within a theory of communication first developed by Stuart Hall (1973) . This paper challenges the established, empirical theories of mass communications research, which assume media messages are relatively transparent and stable. Hall uses the terms encoding and decoding to demonstrate that the media message is neither transparent, nor dependent on the competence of individual receivers/viewers, but is in fact systematically distorted by the entire communication process. In particular, Hall argues there is a lack of fit between the two sides in the communicative exchange between the moment of “encoding,” when the message is translated into the aural-visual signs of televisual discourse, and the moment of “decoding,” when the viewer translates the encoded message. Hall notes that the visual nature of televisual discourse means we tend to overlook the mediated nature of media imagery, which appears to be a transparent reflection rather than a systematic construction of the world around us. Hall's sense that televisual discourse creates a communicative boundary that distorts media messages is informed by structuralist theory. Just as structuralism argues that language and sign systems do not reflect, but structure and construct, the real, so Hall argues that the visual discourse of television translates reality into two-dimensional planes, ... log in or subscribe to read full text