Encoding/Decoding

from Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Saussure had referred to as 'the role of signs as part of social

life'.
Structuralist semioticians, after Saussure tend to focus on the
internal structure of the text rather than on the processes
involved in its construction or interpretation. Meaning exists
within the text. They are not interested in 'subjective'
responses of the reader, which they saw as 'a confusion
between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does)'
Monolithic theories of this kind ignore what Saussure had
referred to as 'the role of signs as part of social life'.
Contemporary semioticians refer to the creation and interpretation of texts as 'encoding'
and 'decoding' respectively.
For semioticians, there is no such thing as an uncoded message, so that - for those who
argue that all experience is coded - even 'encoding' might be more accurately described as
'recoding' (Hawkes 1977, 104, 106, 107).
In the context of semiotics, 'decoding' involves not simply basic recognition and
comprehension of what a text 'says' but also the interpretation and evaluation of its
meaning with reference to relevant codes. Where a distinction is made between
comprehension and interpretation this tends to be primarily with reference to purely verbal
text, but even in this context such a distinction is untenable; what is 'meant' is invariably
more than what is 'said'
Whilst Saussure's model of oral communication is (for its time) innovatingly labelled as a
'speech circuit' and includes directional arrows indicating the involvement of both
participants (thus at least implying 'feedback'), it too was nevertheless a linear
transmission model (albeit a 'two-track' one). It was based on the notion that
comprehension on the part of the listener is a kind of mirror of the speaker's initial process
of expressing a thought. In this model there is only the briefest of allusions to the speaker's
use of 'the code provided by the language', together with the implicit assumption that a
fixed code is shared.

In 1960 another structural linguist - Roman Jakobson

proposed a model of interpersonal verbal communication
which moved beyond the basic transmission model of
communication and highlighted the importance of the codes and social contexts involved.
He noted elsewhere that 'the efficiency of a speech event demands the use of a common
code by its participants'. He outlines what he regards as the six 'constitutive factors... in
any act of verbal communication' thus:
The addresser sends a message to the addressee. To be operative the message requires a
context referred to ('referent' in another, somewhat ambivalent, nomenclature), seizable by
the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized, a code fully, or at least
partially, common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words, to the encoder and
decoder of the message); and finally, a contact, a physical channel and psychological
connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to stay in
communication.
context
message
addresser --------------------------------------- addressee
contact
code
Jakobson proposed that 'each of these six factors determines a different function of
language':
Type

Oriented
towards

Function

Example

referential

context

imparting information

It's raining.

expressive

addresser

expressing feelings or attitudes

It's bloody pissing down

again!

conative

addressee

influencing behaviour

Wait here till it stops

raining!

phatic

contact

establishing or maintaining
social relationships

Nasty weather again,

isn't it?

metalingual

code

referring to the nature of the

interaction (e.g. genre)

This is the weather

forecast.

poetic

message

foregrounding textual features

It droppeth as the gentle

rain from heaven.

This model avoids the reduction of

language to 'communication'.
Referential content is not always
foregrounded. Jakobson argued that
in any given situation one of these
factors is 'dominant', and that this
dominant function influences the general character of the 'message'. For
instance, the poetic function (which is intended to refer to any creative use of
language rather than simply to poetry) highlights 'the palpability of signs',
undermining any sense of a 'natural' or 'transparent' connection between a
signifier and a referent. Jakobson's model demonstrates that messages and
meanings cannot be isolated from such constitutive contextual factors. In its
acknowledgement of social functions this is a model which is consonant with
the structuralist theory that the subject (here in the form of the 'addresser' and
the 'addressee') is constructed through discourse.
Whilst these earlier models had been concerned with interpersonal
communication, in an essay on 'Encoding/Decoding' (Hall 1980, originally
published as 'Encoding and Decoding in Television Discourse' in 1973), the
British sociologist Stuart Hall proposed a model of mass communication which
highlighted the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes. Justin
Wren-Lewis insists that Hall's model, with its emphasis on coding and
decoding as signifying practices, is 'above all, a semiological conception'
(Wren-Lewis 1983, 179). Hall rejected textual determinism, noting that
'decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings' (Hall 1980, 136). In
contrast to the earlier models, Hall thus gave a significant role to the 'decoder'
as well as to the 'encoder'.
Hall referred to various phases in the Encoding/Decoding model of
communication as moments, a term which many other commentators have
subsequently employed (frequently without explanation). John Corner offers
his own definitions:

the moment of encoding: 'the institutional practices and organizational

conditions and practices of production' (Corner 1983, 266);
the moment of the text: 'the... symbolic construction, arrangement and
perhaps performance... The form and content of what is published or
broadcast' (ibid., 267); and

the moment of decoding: 'the moment of reception [or] consumption...

by... the reader/hearer/viewer' which is regarded by most theorists as
'closer to a form of "construction"' than to 'the passivity... suggested by
the term "reception"' (ibid.).

Hall himself referred to several 'linked but distinctive moments - production,

circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction' (Hall 1980, 128) as part of
the 'circuit of communication' (a term which clearly signals the legacy of
Saussure). Corner adds that the moment of encoding and that of decoding 'are
socially contingent practices which may be in a greater or lesser degree of
alignment in relation to each other but which are certainly not to be thought
of... as 'sending' and 'receiving' linked by the conveyance of a 'message' which
is the exclusive vehicle of meaning' (Corner 1983, pp. 267-8).
Mass media codes offer their readers social identities which some may adopt as
their own. But readers do not necessarily accept such codes. Where those
involved in communicating do not share common codes and social positions,
decodings are likely to be different from the encoder's intended meaning.
Umberto Eco uses the term 'aberrant decoding' to refer to a text which has been
decoded by means of a different code from that used to encode it (Eco 1965).
Eco describes as 'closed' those texts which show a strong tendency to
encourage a particular interpretation - in contrast to more 'open' texts (Eco
1981). He argues that mass media texts tend to be 'closed texts', and because
they are broadcast to heterogeneous audiences diverse decodings of such texts
are unavoidable.
Stuart Hall stressed the role of social positioning in the interpretation of mass
media texts by different social groups. In a model deriving from Frank Parkin's
'meaning systems', Hall suggested three hypothetical interpretative codes or
positions for the reader of a text (Parkin 1972; Hall 1973; Hall 1980, 136-8;
Morley 1980, 20-21, 134-7; Morley 1981b, 51; Morley 1983, 109-10):

dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code
and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may
not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the
author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent';
negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly
accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a
way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local
and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) this position involves contradictions;
oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social
situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant
code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code
and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of

reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television

broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote
against).
This framework is based on the assumption that the latent meaning of the text is
encoded in the dominant code. This is a stance which tends to reify the medium
and to downplay conflicting tendencies within texts. Also, some critics have
raised the question of how a 'preferred reading' can be established. Shaun
Moores asks 'Where is it and how do we know if we've found it? Can we be
sure we didn't put it there ourselves while we were looking? And can it be
found by examining any sort of text?' (Moores 1993, 28). Some theorists feel
that the concept may be applied more easily to news and current affairs than to
other mass media genres. David Morley wondered whether it might be the
'reading which the analyst is predicting that most members of the audience will
produce' (Morley 1981a, 6). John Corner argues that it is not easy to find actual
examples of media texts in which one reading is preferred within a plurality of
possible readings (Corner 1983, 279). As Justin Wren-Lewis comments, 'the
fact that many decoders will come up with the same reading does not make that
meaning an essential part of the text' (Wren-Lewis 1983, 184). And Kathy
Myers notes, in the spirit of a post-structuralist social semiotics, that 'it can be
misleading to search for the determinations of a preferred reading solely within
the form and structure' of the text (Myers 1983, 216). Furthermore, in the
context of advertising, she adds that:
There is a danger in the analysis of advertising of assuming that it is in
the interests of advertisers to create one 'preferred' reading of the
advertisement's message. Intentionality suggests conscious manipulation
and organization of texts and images, and implies that the visual,
technical and linguistic strategies work together to secure one preferred
reading of an advertisement to the exclusion of others... The openness of
connotative codes may mean that we have to replace the notion of
'preferred reading' with another which admits a range of possible
alternatives open to the audience. (Myers 1983, 214-16)
Just as a reductive reading of Hall's model could lead to the reification of a
medium or genre, it could also encourage the essentialising of readers (e.g. as
'the resistant reader') whereas reading positions are 'multiform, fissured,
schizophrenic, unevenly developed, culturally, discursively and politically
discontinuous, forming part of a shifting realm of ramifying differences and
contradictions' (Stam 2000, 233).
Despite the various criticisms, Hall's model has been very influential,
particularly amongst British theorists. David Morley employed it in his studies
of how different social groups interpreted a television programme (Morley
1980). Morley insisted that he did not take a social determinist position in

which individual 'decodings' of a text are reduced to a direct consequence of

social class position. 'It is always a question of how social position, as it is
articulated through particular discourses, produces specific kinds of readings or
decodings. These readings can then be seen to be patterned by the way in which
the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position'
(Morley 1983, 113; cf. Morley 1992, 89-90). Morley's point about differential
access to discourses can be related to to the various kinds of 'capital' outlined
by Pierre Bourdieu - notably 'cultural capital' (to which Bourdieu relates the
construction of 'taste') and 'symbolic capital' (communicative repertoire). An
'interpretative repertoire' (Jonathan Potter, cited in Grayson 1998, 40) is part of
the symbolic capital of members of the relevant 'interpretative community' and
constitutes the textual and interpretative codes available to them (which offer
them the potential to understand and sometimes also to produce texts which
employ them). Morley added that any individual or group might operate
different decoding strategies in relation to different topics and different
contexts. A person might make 'oppositional' readings of the same material in
one context and 'dominant' readings in other contexts (Morley 1981a, 9; Morley
1981b, 66, 67; Morley 1992, 135). He noted that in interpreting viewers'
readings of mass media texts attention should be paid not only to the issue of
agreement (acceptance/rejection) but to comprehension, relevance and
enjoyment (Morley 1981a, 10; Morley 1992, 126-7, 136).
The interpretation of signs by their users can be seen from a semiotic
perspective as having three levels (loosely related to C W Morris's framework
for branches of semiotics):

syntactic: recognition of the sign (in relation to other signs);

semantic: comprehension of the intended meaning of the sign;
pragmatic: interpretation of the sign in terms of relevance, agreement
etc.
(See also Goldsmith 1984, 124, although she makes different
distinctions)

The most basic task of interpretation involves the identification of what a sign
represents (denotation) and may require some degree of familiarity with the
medium and the representational codes involved. This is particularly obvious in
the case of language, but may also apply in the case of visual media such as
photographs and films. Some would not grant this low-level process the label
of 'interpretation' at all, limiting this term to such processes as the extraction of
a 'moral' from a narrative text. However, David Mick and Laura Politi take the
stance that comprehension and interpretation are inseparable, making an
analogy with denotation and connotation (Mick & Politi 1989, 85).
Justin Wren-Lewis comments that 'given the wealth of material using
semiological tools for the analysis of film and television, it is remarkable that

so little work has been done on the practice of decoding' (Wren-Lewis 1983,
195). Whilst social semiotics stakes a claim to the study of situated semiotic
practices, research in this area is dominated by ethnographic and
phenomenological methodologies and is seldom closely allied to semiotic
perspectives (though there is no necessary incompatibility). A notable exception
is the research of David Mick in the field of advertising (Mick & Politi 1989,
McQuarrie & Mick 1992, Mick & Buhl 1992).