- Jan 2022
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medium.com medium.com
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The problem with Juass’s model was that an audience was less likely to have similar or shared reactions if they did not have anything in common with the author so their personal experience would vary person to person and be completely different then the author’s intended encoding.
Is there any actual way to know with certainty whether an audience member decoded the intended message? Or rather, is there any way to completely decode the exact message? Isn't there always going to be some level of disparity or subjectivity due to unavoidable cognitive biases?
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During the production of the message, the sender uses verbal cues, signs, and body language that he or she believes the person or group receiving the message will understand (Hall, 1973).
The importance of body-language is extremely undervalued. Gestures, facial expressions, posture can certainly help in the decoding of the intended message. For example, take a play such as Merchant of Venice and a comparison of its portrayal in the Elizabethan Era and the Modern Era. Actors playing Shylock today, want to simultaneously present him as a villain but more so as a victim of the old, prejudiced Christian Society and therefore deliver the same dialogues with more compassion, their body language is more of someone "hurt" than just evil and careless as compared to actors playing Shylock in the elizabethan era, where the intention was to spark distaste for jews like him.
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We are constantly surrounded by images and texts that are supposed to trigger reactions. Hall stated that “We must recognize that the discursive form of the message has a privileged position in the communicative exchange… and that the moments of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding,’ though only ‘relatively autonomous’ in relation to the communicative process as a whole, are determinate moments” (Hall, 1973). Hall argues that though media is encoding with one meaning, each one of us interacts with our media in different ways.
This reminds me of a theory I came across while reading Dan Ariely's 'Predictably Irrational'. "We are constantly surrounded by images and texts that are supposed to trigger reactions." -- The human brain is irrational in nature, and is subject to the natural phenomena of ‘imprinting’ which implies that our first impression or perception of a certain object or entity (which Ariely refers to as an anchor) has the power to influence future decisions we make relating to that object or entity. In terms of markets and prices for example, although initial prices we pay or are subject to are arbitrary in nature, they shape present and future prices and decisions because they become established anchors in the minds of consumers. Similarly, a message promoted by Colgate in its advertisement for toothpaste, is bound to influence the way we decode every other advertisement about toothpaste in relation to it. This phenomena, called the "Arbitrary Coherence Theory" is therefore actually the root cause of the disparity in encoding and decoding messages, and can be applied to everything from a fiction book, to a ted-talk about success. We never view anything in absolute, and therefore it is impossible to decode a message someone is delivering to us in absolute terms too.
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Hall also points out that how the meaning of a message is received is influenced by how the message is circulated. “…the broadcasting structures must yield encoded messages in the form of a meaningful discourse. The institution-societal relations of production must pass under the discursive rules of language for its product to be ‘realized’” (Hall, 1973). The slogan of Black Lives Matter was originally circulated from a Facebook post by Alicia Garza (Collurs, 2017).
The power and speed of the internet and social media today is also a threat to this idea of "encoding the right message". Like the article says, "he slogan of Black Lives Matter was originally circulated from a Facebook post by Alicia Garza", think about it. An individual posts something on a site like facebook, another individuals decodes it in a manner not intended and puts up a story expressing his/here views against it. In seconds, maybe even milliseconds, this story has the power to be viral in over a million households. That one incorrectly decoded message, has now been encoded to millions making the task of rectifying or truly understanding it almost impossible.
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he tried to establish the relationship between the sender and receiver and stated that there are a number of steps that play a role in the sending and receiving of a message.
This is actually such an interesting statement. I think over the last few years, we often attribute the impact globalization and industrialization to the ease of communication they have resulted in. However, Hall's view about how complex "communication" is going to remain eternally, irrespective of how easy and effective channels of communication become, is so true.
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As a result, culture was not simply to be appreciated, but it was the place where the power relation was established
Hall says that as a result of hegemony, society prioritised establishing a power relation, over appreciating culture. Is this particularly true? To my knowledge, the hegemonic stability theory argues for facilitating international cooperation. If this is true won't greater international cooperation, inadvertently lead to a greater appreciation and respect for different nations and cultures?
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Hall did not think language and communication were as easily understandable as a tap on the shoulder.
To play devil's advocate, I think an alternate stance could be: As the world moves towards a more conscious and well informed era, it is maybe subconsciously so, striving for language and communication to become less subjective; it is striving for certain words/phrases to be associated with one connotation rather than varying connotations based on culture. An example would be a term such as "gay". In the last decade, we have seen a paradigm shift from its use in everyday language as a derogatory term as different cultures had different ideologies and levels of wake-ness, to now a more sensitive, respectful use of the word.
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