传播学经典导读教材-12 霍尔Encoding and Decoding.docVIP

12 Encoding/Decoding Stuart Hall It was argued earlier that since there is no necessary correspondence between encoding and decoding , the former can attempt to “pre-let” but cannot prescribe or guarantee the latter , which has its own conditions of existence . Unless they are wildly aberrant , encoding will have the effect of constructing some of the limits and parameters within which decoding will operate . If there were no limits , audiences could simply read whatever they liked into any message . No doubt some total misunderstandings of this kind do exist . But the vast range must contain some degree of reciprocity between encoding and decoding moments , otherwise we could not speak of an effective communicative ex-change at all . Nevertheless ,this “ correspondence” is not given but constructed . It is not “natural” but the product of an articulation between two distinct moments. And the former cannot determine or guarantee, in a simple sense, which decoding codes will be employed . Otherwise communication would be “a perfectly equivalent circuit”, and every, message would be an instance of “perfectly transparent communication”. We must think, then, of the variant articulations in which encoding /decoding can be combined . To elaborate on this , we offer a hypothetical analysis of some possible decoding positions , in order to reinforce the point of “no necessary correspondence”? We identify three hypothetical positions from which decodings of a televisual discourse may be constructed . These need to be empirically tested and refined . But the argument that decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings, that they are not identical, reinforces the arguments of “no necessary ～correspondence”. It also helps to deconstruct the commonsense meaning of “misunderstanding” in terms of a theory, of “systematically distorted communication”. The first hypothetical position is that of the dominant-hegemonic position. When the viewer takes the connoted meaning from, sa