Reading Activity 2: Probing Communication and Reception Theory in Art

GUIDE QUESTIONS

1. How does Hall’s theory modify the basic communication model? What did his
modification of the communication model do in terms of our understanding of what is “real” in
visual sign systems?

Hall attempted to create the sender-receiver relationship and argued that there are a lot of
phases involved in the sending and receiving of a message. Throughout the process, Hall
believed that the audience played a significant role in the delivery's success. Hall's new model
centered on televised discourse and compared it to the communication process, creating a circuit.
“Language and media do not reflect the truth, but simply build something on our behalf,” he
said. So, even in simple language, words are merely things made to transfer a three-dimensional
universe into a two-dimensional plane (Procter, 2004). This differs from prior theories in that
many previous notions disregarded the audience as having a significant role in the process.
However, according to Hall's thesis, the audience could adapt the interpretation of a
communication to match their social environment. As a result, Hall incorporated two processes:
encoding and decoding, and argued that the message encoded by the author is not always the one
that the audience will decode. Applying his theory to the advertising process, Hall wrote, “The
level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different
discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect
with the deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional more active ideological
dimensions” (Hall, 1973). When it comes to modern media, Hall believes that if it is not
arranged in a relatable manner, it will be ineffective. As a result, our history, commercials,
current events, and even scandals must be converted into interactive stories rather than merely
being uttered.
 2. What did he mean by “reading” and what are the different kinds of readings that Hall
proposes?

What is encoded and what is decoded are not the same thing. Crucially, there is a gap
between the two. There is no one-to-one relationship between a textual sign and, say, the viewer's
interpretation, or between what is entered and how it is read. There are a number of
correspondences. In other words, we cannot assume that everyone decodes in the same way. As a
result, Hall established the importance of identification in the act of interpretation. Identity —
who and where the ‘reader' was – determined his or her ability to accept, reject, or change the
text's assumptions. As a result, Hall would differentiate three types of reading positions:
dominant, oppositional, and negotiated. Readers accept what is embedded unproblematically in
the dominant reading of a text, reinforcing its ideological or preferred meaning. In the
oppositional reading of a text, readers reject the dominant reading that is obvious but
unacceptable to them due to their social status, and decode the text accordingly. In the negotiated
reading, both the dominant and opposing readings retain their appeals, and decoding sits
alongside and against the chosen reading. Your audience will have a lot in common, but they will
also have a lot that separates them. You can't presume that they'll all be watching and perceiving
your film the same way.