The theory of encoding and decoding is a critical theory formulated by the British sociologist Stuart Hall in the work Encoding, Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973), which is a part of his cultural studies. Instead of the literary and history-oriented approaches of the reception theory, Hall based his judgment on the example of television, although his theory is applicable to other media, such as broadcast (film, radio, recorded music, or television), print media (newspapers, books, pamphlets or comics), outdoor media (billboards, signs or placards placed inside and outside of commercial buildings, sports stadiums, shops and buses) and the Internet (email, websites, blogs, and internet based radio and television) (“Mass Media” par. 3, 4, 5, 7).
To a great extent, Hall’s involvement with the cultural studies, which, according to Chris Barker, “seek to explore the connections between the forms of power and to develop ways of thinking about culture and power that can be utilized by agents in the pursuit of change” (Barker and Galasiński 25), was due to his background. Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica in 1932 to a family with both “class” and “colored” heterogeneous origins.
His family belonged to the middle class; however, his father and mother came from the different strata. Hall’s father descended from the lower caste, which comprised of mixed ethnic groups (Africans, Portuguese, Jewish, and others). His mother belonged to the higher class, the “local white” strata that culturally identified itself with England and planters; “she considered England as homeland and identified herself with the colonial power” (Chen).
As a schoolboy, Hall was as anti-imperialist who sided with the movement for national independence of Jamaica, avoiding friendship with pupils from the upper class. The dramatic story of his sister, who had been prohibited from having a relationship with a Barbados native from the lower strata, and who ended up receiving the electroconvulsive therapy and forever remained in her parental home due to the disability resulting from the treatment, made Hall realize the contradiction of the colonial culture, “the way an individual experiences the colonial dependence on color and class and how it can destroy him/her as a subject” (Chen).
Hall’s theory was developed as a response to the traditional process of communication in terms of a circulation circuit or loop, conceptualized by the mass-communications research, which was “criticized for its linearity – sender/message/receiver – for its concentration on the level of message exchange and for the absence of a structured conception of the different moments as a complex structure of relations” (Hall par. 1). By suggesting the presence of an encoded message, its subsequent decoding, as well as decoders, Hall intended to add the missing links in the chain of communication, thus complicating the traditional model, which was seen as a one-way process and drastically overestimated the role of the message sender as well as underestimated the recipient’s role.
Hall’s approach granted rights to the audience, resulting in a conflict with the “deep semantic codes of a culture” (Hall par. 13) that comprised the ideology. The ideological hegemony was a result of the reduced accents within a system, that is, the narrowing of the potential range of values to those preferential in the dominant ideology, allowing its wide application in manipulation. In other words, the encoding and decoding concept were created as a theoretical basis for in praxi attempts to destabilize the hegemonic cultural order.
According to Louw, decoding refers to the way meaning is extracted from a language system. It is suggested that communicators encode meanings in the hope that the recipients of their messages extract the meaning they intended (i.e. decode the text as intended) (Louw The Media and Political Process 207). Hall distinguished three possible types of message decoding. In the first case, the recipient accepts the dominant code, which is what the sender wanted to achieve.
In the second case, the recipient denies the message based on the oppositional code. The third decoding type deals with the negotiated code, which combines both the dominant and oppositional codes, thus partly accepting and denying the message. A closer look should be taken at the three types. In the first case, there is full compliance between the encoding and decoding, and the process corresponds to the ideal of undistorted communication. For Hall, it is the worst possible option, since it means that an individual is fully inscribed into the cultural hegemonic order and operates according to the exclusively prevailing codes.
In this case, the individual becomes an ideologically constructed subject. Here is a contemporary example; decoding an American TV series in the direct correspondence with the encoders’ (that is, the filmmaker’s) plan, a person identifies itself with a white man from the middle class who shares the traditional moral norms; a heterosexual European. This means that if the decoder is, in fact, a woman, a factory worker, a non-European, or a person with nontraditional sexual orientation (or a person possessing all of the mentioned characteristics), the media commit aggression upon the person by incorporating him/her into the hostile cultural order and imposing a false identification.
In the case of the second type, decoding may be radical, that is, the decoder takes up a position directly opposite to the dominant ideology. In this case, the audience member deconstructs the hegemonic cultural code and reconstructs it as a code in opposition. It means that he/she refuses to experience the pleasure of recognition, denounces the ideology’s validity and ceases to perceive own position in the social structure as a normal, natural and consistent. According to Louw, resistance to the values imposed by the broadcaster is a possibility, which is not always translated into action (Louw The Media and Cultural Production 102).
More specifically, the oppositional interpretation is rarer than that which is imposed. However, in conflict situations, the number of oppositional interpretations increases, and in some cases, they become quite frequent. As for the third type, Stuart Hall has also distinguished the negotiated decoding; in this case, there is only partial concurrency between the encoding and decoding, which is inter alia achieved as a result of negotiations.
The point of the negotiation process is that during the process of decoding, the audience member “acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, he makes its own ground rules” (Hall par. 24). Thus, the audience members can still enjoy the pleasure of recognition and have faith in the meaningfulness of the eternal fitness of things, but at the same time, they refuse to fully correspond to the structure of the subject offered to them, and ambiguously respond to the communication.
As cultural studies researcher, Hall linked the media and culture by making values a common unit, since culture is “a set of common values, in which such values permit social expectations and collective understandings” (“Political Values” par. 12). When it comes to propaganda, the “negotiated” and “oppositional” values in the Hall’s concept are of particular interest. According to the contemporary psychologists, there is no harm trying to convince a person regardless of its political preference, as he/she has a different attitude to various problems (in such works as Westen’s The Political Brain and Lakoff’s The Political Mind).
However, he remains a liberal or a conservative, who has a contrasting opinion on certain issues, and this can be used in persuasion. It is crucial for the Western model of elections, where political technology primarily aims at those who have yet to make their decision.
To summarize, the most important factor in the Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory is the active role of the recipient and the ability to read the dominant content of a message as oppositional. In this case, the intermediate version of the message, in which part of the dominant values is not recognized, can serve as a manual for campaign development. This strategy was used by various politicians, including the group of individuals who initiated Perestroika in the USSR by removing the dominating image of Stalin and replacing it with that of Lenin; eventually, the cult of Lenin was renounced, shifting the blame on the system instead of the revolutionary leaders. This example demonstrates that it may take several stages to establish the oppositional thinking.
Sources Cited
“Mass Media.” ScienceDaily. sciencedaily.com, n.d. Web.
“Political Values.” Boundless Political Science. Boundless. 2015. Web.
Barker, Chris, and Dariusz Galasiński. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis, London: Sage Publ., 2001. Print.
Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Autobiographical Interview with Stuart Hall. 1996.
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. 1973. Web.
Louw, P. Eric. The Media and Cultural Production, London: Sage, 2001. Print.
—. The Media and Political Process, London: Sage, 2005. Print.