Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding is a theory of reception theory

Reception theory

Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes the reader's reception of a literary text. It is more generally called audience reception in the analysis of communications models. In literary studies, reception theory originated from the work of Hans-Robert Jauss in...

, developed by Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...

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To understand Hall's Theory, it is necessary to review his conception of the process of encoding and decoding. Hall cites Terni in regards to the process of decoding:

By the word reading, we mean not only the capacity to identify, and decode a certain number of signs, but also the subjective capacity to put them into a creative relation between themselves and with other signs: a capacity which is, by itself, the condition for a complete awareness of one's total environment.

In the case of television, the medium takes systemic responsibility in determining the relationship of various signs presented, ordering them for us. Television and other media makers are actively involved in encoding messages using signs which already have deeply embedded meaning:

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.

Media makers create texts according to Hall's concept of the dominant code. In the domain cultural order there is an imposition of classifications on the social, cultural, and political world. These hierarchical classifications are organized according to dominant and preferred meanings, what Hall describes as "how things work for all practical purposes in this culture."

Because the audience has part of the aspect of decoding performed already on behalf of the message-makers, there are three possible responses in a tele-visual discourse.

Dominant Hegemonic Position

When an audience interprets the message as it was meant to be understood, they are operating in the dominant code. The position of professional broadcasters and media producers is that messages are already signified within the hegemonic manner to which they are accustomed. Professional codes for media organizations serve to contribute to this type of industrial psychology. The producers and the audience are in harmony, understanding, communicating, and sharing mediated signs in the established mindset of framing.

Negotiated Position

Not all audiences may understand what media producers take for granted. There may be some acknowledgement of differences in understanding:

Decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules - it operates with exceptions to the rule.

While the hegemonic view and dominant definitions will tie events to "grand totalizations" as Hall calls them, negotiated positions are the result of the audience struggling to understand the dominant position or experiencing dissonance with those views.

Globally Contrary Position

When media consumers understand the contextual and literary inflections of a text yet decode the message by a completely oppositional means, this is the globally contrary position. the de-totalization of that text enables them to rework it to their preferred meaning. This requires operating with an oppositional code which can understand dominant hegemonic positions while finding frameworks to refute them. Hall feels that this position is necessary to begin a struggle in discourse, or the "politics of signification."