We talked this week about a lot of different aspects of message construction
and processing.
I want to end with Reception Theory, because it bridges this week’s perspective
with the cultural approach that we will discuss next week.
Stuart Hall is often mentioned as one of the frontrunners of reception theory,
also known as reception analysis or audience reception.
It’s a theory that focuses on how the recipient receives and gives meaning to a message.
Hall, influenced by Semiotics,
saw communication as a negotiation between sender, text and receiver.
A communicator ‘encodes’ a message with meaning.
Recipients take meaning from that message. Hall called this ‘decoding’.
We talked before about the use of codes and signs in a text.
In a way the reader ‘negotiates’ with the text, relying on his or her knowledge,
experiences, cultural background et cetera.
This negotiation can lead to different outcomes, the principle of polysemic messages:
The idea that messages can be interpreted by many people in many different ways.
The opposite of polysemic massages are monosemic messages,
messages that have only one meaning. Umberto Eco uses the terms, Open or Closed texts.
Perhaps it would be more useful to see the distinction between Open and Closed texts,
as a dimension.
Where some texts leave more room for interpretation than others.
A math formula is relatively closed, while an abstract painting is relatively open.
Likewise a painted portrait is considered more open than a photo portrait.
But an abstract painting would in comparison be even more open. It’s all relative.
To explain his views further Hall came up with the encoding/decoding model
in which he explains the different ways a receiver can decode a message.
Let’s say Rose publishes a brochure.
Rose is a conservative politician, and argues in her pamphlet for more use of nuclear energy
as an alternative for the use of fossil fuels.
There is going to be an election on this and Rose want people to vote for her.
The pamphlet is read by Jake.
The sender, politician Rose, has some intent when she encoded or composed her message.
If Jake completely internalizes the message and decodes it in the way Rose intended,
he agrees and is going to vote for her.
This is the ‘preferred reading’.
According to reception theory this is more likely to occur when Jake and Rose share
a cultural background. For instance if Jake is sympathetic towards the conservative party.
If there is a higher cultural proximity between
sender and receiver, there is also a higher likelihood of a preferred reading taking place.
Of course, Jake could also partly decode it in the preferred way,
and also reading it partly different.
Stuart Hall called this a ‘negotiated reading’.
For instance, Jake could agree with Rose's arguments,
but he decides to vote for someone else.
A third way of decoding this message would be total rejection by Jake.
He reads Rose’s pamphlet but completely disagrees
and he concludes Rose is completely wrong and doesn’t deserve his vote.
This is an ‘oppositional reading’.
This is more likely to occur if Jake and Rose are, culturally, further apart.
If for instance Jake is a supporter of liberal politics.
You can see that implicit in Reception Theory is the idea that communication serves as both a
carrier, reflection and producer of culture.
This theory therefore bridges this week’s and next week’s topics.
The construction and signification approach and the cultural approach
actually complement each other.
I want to end this week's MOOC by emphasizing that in fact
these two perspectives are intertwined.
We'll discuss this further next week, when we talk about the cultural approach.
I hope to see you then.