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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 !ind ignore what Saussure had

referred to as 'the role of signs as part of social life'.

"ontemporary semioticians refer to the creation and interpretation of texts as 'encoding'

and 'decoding' respectively.

#or 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' (%aw!es &, &)*, &)+, &).

n 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. -here a distinction is made betweencomprehension 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'

-hilst 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 'feedbac!', it too was nevertheless a linear

transmission model (albeit a 'two$trac!' one. t was based on the notion that

comprehension on the part of the listener is a !ind of mirror of the spea!er's initial process

of expressing a thought. n this model there is only the briefest of allusions to the spea!er'suse of 'the code provided by the language', together with the implicit assumption that a

fixed code is shared.

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n &+) another structural linguist $ /oman 0a!obson

 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.

%e noted elsewhere that 'the efficiency of a speech event demands the use of a common

code by its participants'. %e outlines what he regards as the six 'constitutive factors... in

any act of verbal communication' thus1

The addresser  sends a message to the addressee. To be operative the message re2uires a

context  referred to ('referent' in another, somewhat ambivalent, nomenclature, sei3able by

the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbali3ed, 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

0a!obson proposed that 'each of these six factors determines a different function oflanguage'1

Type Orientedtowards 

Function  Example 

referential context imparting information It's raining.

expressive addresser expressing feelings or attitudesIt's bloody pissing downagain!

conative addressee influencing behaviourWait here till it stops

raining!

phatic contactestablishing or maintainingsocial relationships

Nasty weather again,isn't it?

metalingual codereferring to the nature of theinteraction e.g. genre

"his is the weatherforecast.

poetic message foregrounding textual featuresIt droppeth as the gentlerain from heaven.

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This model avoids the reduction oflanguage to 'communication'.

/eferential content is not always

foregrounded. 0a!obson argued that

in any given situation one of these

factors is 'dominant', and that this

dominant function influences the general character of the 'message'. #or

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. 0a!obson's model demonstrates that messages andmeanings cannot be isolated from such constitutive contextual factors. n its

ac!nowledgement 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.

-hilst these earlier models had been concerned with interpersonal

communication, in an essay on '4ncoding56ecoding' (%all &7), originally

 published as '4ncoding and 6ecoding in Television 6iscourse' in &8, the

9ritish sociologist Stuart %all proposed a model of mass communication which

highlighted the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes. 0ustin-ren$:ewis insists that %all's model, with its emphasis on coding and

decoding as signifying practices, is 'above all, a semiological conception'

(-ren$:ewis &78, &. %all rejected textual determinism, noting that

'decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings' (%all &7), &8+. n

contrast to the earlier models, %all thus gave a significant role to the 'decoder'

as well as to the 'encoder'.

%all referred to various phases in the 4ncoding56ecoding model of

communication as moments, a term which many other commentators have

subse2uently employed (fre2uently without explanation. 0ohn "orner offers

his own definitions1

the moment of encoding 1 'the institutional practices and organi3ational

conditions and practices of production' ("orner &78, ;++

the moment of the text 1 'the... symbolic construction, arrangement and

 perhaps performance... The form and content of what is published or

 broadcast' (ibid. , ;+ and

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

 broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote

against .

This framewor! 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. Blso, some critics haveraised the 2uestion of how a 'preferred reading' can be established. Shaun

Moores as!s '-here is it and how do we !now if we've found itC "an we be

sure we didn't put it there ourselves while we were loo!ingC Bnd can it be

found by examining any sort of textC' (Moores &8, ;7. Some theorists feel

that the concept may be applied more easily to news and current affairs than to

other mass media genres. 6avid Morley wondered whether it might be the

'reading which the analyst is predicting that most members of the audience will

 produce' (Morley &7&a, +. 0ohn "orner 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 ("orner &78, ;. Bs 0ustin -ren$:ewis comments, 'the

fact that many decoders will come up with the same reading does not ma!e that

meaning an essential part of the text' (-ren$:ewis &78, &7*. Bnd Dathy

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 &78, ;&+. #urthermore, in the

context of advertising, she adds that1

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. ntentionality suggests conscious manipulation

and organi3ation of texts and images, and implies that the visual,

technical and linguistic strategies wor! 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 &78, ;&*$&+ 

0ust as a reductive reading of %all'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,

schi3ophrenic, unevenly developed, culturally, discursively and politically

discontinuous, forming part of a shifting realm of ramifying differences and

contradictions' (Stam ;))), ;88.

6espite the various criticisms, %all's model has been very influential,

 particularly amongst 9ritish theorists. 6avid Morley employed it in his studies

of how different social groups interpreted a television programme (Morley

&7). Morley insisted that he did not  ta!e a social determinist  position in

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which individual 'decodings' of a text are reduced to a direct conse2uence of

social class position. 't is always a 2uestion of how social position, as it is

articulated through particular discourses, produces specific !inds 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 &78, &&8 cf. Morley &;, 7$). Morley's point about differential

access to discourses can be related to to the various !inds of 'capital' outlined

 by Aierre 9ourdieu $ notably 'cultural capital' (to which 9ourdieu relates the

construction of 'taste' and 'symbolic capital' (communicative repertoire. Bn

'interpretative repertoire' (0onathan Aotter, cited in Erayson &7, *) 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. B person might ma!e 'oppositional' readings of the same material in

one context and 'dominant' readings in other contexts (Morley &7&a, Morley

&7&b, ++, + Morley &;, &8@. %e noted that in interpreting viewers'

readings of mass media texts attention should be paid not only to the issue of

agreement  (acceptance5rejection but to comprehension, relevance and

enjoyment  (Morley &7&a, &) Morley &;, &;+$, &8+.

The interpretation of signs by their users can be seen from a semiotic

 perspective as having three levels (loosely related to " - Morris's framewor!

for branches of semiotics1

  syntactic1 recognition of the sign (in relation to other signs

  semantic1 comprehension of the intended meaning of the sign

  pragmatic1 interpretation of the sign in terms of relevance, agreement

etc.

(See also Eoldsmith &7*, &;*, although she ma!es different

distinctions

The most basic tas! of interpretation involves the identification of what a sign

represents (denotation and may re2uire some degree of familiarity with the

medium and the representational codes involved. This is particularly obvious inthe 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. %owever, 6avid Mic! and :aura Aoliti ta!e the

stance that comprehension and interpretation are inseparable, ma!ing an

analogy with denotation and connotation (Mic! F Aoliti &7, 7@.

0ustin -ren$:ewis comments that 'given the wealth of material using

semiological tools for the analysis of film and television, it is remar!able that

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so little wor! has been done on the practice of decoding' (-ren$:ewis &78,

&@. -hilst social semiotics sta!es 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. B notable exception

is the research of 6avid Mic! in the field of advertising (Mic! F Aoliti &7,

McGuarrie F Mic! &;, Mic! F 9uhl &;.