Encoding and Decoding-Article Review

Hall defines the process of communication as a ‘complex structure of dominance’ involving power struggles at the production and consumption ends of the communication circuit. The production side entails encoded messages that are produced within the dominant social structure. These messages are framed by the universal structures of understanding, by social and economic relations that permit them to be disseminated into the public consciousness. Hall is careful to discern that these hegemonical ‘codes’ within discourse, while they ‘prefer’ certain modes of decoding, do not pre-determine how they are decoded on the consumption end. The processes of encoding and decoding operate autonomously from one another which often can result in misunderstandings or miscommunications. Just like the word ‘cow’ is an abstract reference to the actual cow, there is no such thing as ‘pure language’ or ‘transparent communication’. Coded messages are polysemic, such that their decoding is dependent on the cultural sub-group on the receiving end. Often there exists a disjuncture between the intended message and received message which is a result of ‘class struggles within language’, where the already coded signs intersect with the culturally rooted semantic codes of the subgroup.
Hall defines three principle methods of decoding messages, with respect to televised discourse: the first, called the dominant-hegemonic position is the universally accepted code of discourse, the one that assumes the responsibility of carefully constructing ‘perfectly transparent communication’ where the viewer ideally takes the encoded meaning and decodes the message using the reference code from which it was constructed. The second, called the ‘negotiated code’, while still acknowledging the dominant code, operates on its own agenda abstracting the message based on its own, more locally situated logic. The third, called the ‘oppositional position’, where the viewer takes the coded message and deliberately reads it using opposing frameworks of understanding to deconstruct the constructed meaning in order to get closer to the truth behind the message being conveyed.