2022年2022年霍尔的编码与解码 .pdf

10Encoding/decoding *Stuart HallTraditionally, mass-communications research has conceptualized the process ofcommunication in terms of a circulation circuit or loop. This model has beencriticized for its linearitysender/message/receiverfor its concentration on thelevel of message exchange and for the absence of a structured conception of thedifferent moments as a complex structure of relations. But it is also possible (anduseful) to think of this process in terms of a structure produced and sustainedthrough the articulation of linked but distinctive momentsproduction,circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction. This would be to think of theprocess as a complex structure in dominance, sustained through the articulationof connected practices, each of which, however, retains its distinctiveness andhas its own specific modality, its own forms and conditions of existence. Thissecond approach, homologous to that which forms the skeleton of commodityproduction offered in Marxs Grundrisse and in Capital, has the added advantageof bringing out more sharply how a continuous circuitproduction-distribution-productioncan be sustained through a passage of forms.1 It also highlightsthe specificity of the forms in which the product of the process appears in eachmoment, and thus what distinguishes discursive production from other types ofproduction in our society and in modern media systems.The object of these practices is meanings and messages in the form of sign-vehicles of a specific kind organized, like any form of communication orlanguage, through the operation of codes within the syntagmatic chain of adiscourse. The apparatuses, relations and practices of production thus issue, at acertain moment (the moment of production/circulation) in the form of symbolicvehicles constituted within the rules of language . It is in this discursive formthat the circulation of the product takes place. The process thus requires, at theproduction end, its material instrumentsits means as well as its own sets ofsocial (production) relationsthe organization and combination of practiceswithin media apparatuses. But it is in the discursive form that the circulation ofthe product takes place, as well as its distribution to different audiences. Onceaccomplished, the discourse must then be translatedtransformed, againintosocial practices if the circuit is to be both completed and effective. If nomeaning is taken, there can be no consumption . If the meaning is notarticulated in practice, it has no effect. The value of this approach is that while名师资料总结 - - -精品资料欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 名师精心整理 - - - - - - - 第 1 页，共 11 页 - - - - - - - - - each of the moments, in articulation, is necessary to the circuit as a whole, noone moment can fully guarantee the next moment with which it is articulated.Since each has its specific modality and conditions of existence, each canconstitute its own break or interruption of the passage of forms on whosecontinuity the flow of effective production (that is, reproduction) depends.Thus while in no way wanting to limit research to following only those leadswhich emerge from content analysis,2 we must recognize that the discursiveform of the message has a privileged position in the communicative exchange(from the viewpoint of circulation), and that the moments of encoding anddecoding , though only relatively autonomous in relation to thecommunicative process as a whole, are determinate moments. A raw historicalevent cannot, in that form, be transmitted by, say, a television newscast. Eventscan only be signified within the aural-visual forms of the televisual discourse. Inthe moment when a historical event passes under the sign of discourse, it issubject to all the complex formal rules by which language signifies. To put itparadoxically, the event must become a story before it can become acommunicative event. In that moment the formal sub-rules of discourse are indominance , without, of course, subordinating out of existence the historicalevent so signified, the social relations in which the rules are set to work or thesocial and political consequences of the event having been signified in this way.The message form is the necessary form of appearance of the event in itspassage from source to receiver. Thus the transposition into and out of themessage form (or the mode of symbolic exchange) is not a random moment ,which we can take up or ignore at our convenience. The message form is adeterminate moment; though, at another level, it comprises the surfacemovements of the communications system only and requires, at another stage, tobe integrated into the social relations of the communication process as a whole,of which it forms only a part.From this general perspective, we may crudely characterize the televisioncommunicative process as follows. The institutional structures of broadcasting,with their practices and networks of production, their organized relations andtechnical infrastructures, are required to produce a programme. Using theanalogy of Capital, this is the labour process in the discursive mode.Production, here, constructs the message. In one sense, then, the circuit beginshere. Of course, the production process is not without its discursive aspect: it,too, is framed throughout by meanings and ideas: knowledge-in-use concerningthe routines of production, historically defined technical skills, professionalideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, assumptionsabout the audience and so on frame the constitution of the programme through thisproduction structure. Further, though the production structures of television*This article is an edited extract from Encoding and Decoding in Television Discourse,CCCS Stencilled Paper no. 7.118ENCODING/DECODING名师资料总结 - - -精品资料欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 名师精心整理 - - - - - - - 第 2 页，共 11 页 - - - - - - - - - originate the television discourse, they do not constitute a closed system. Theydraw topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience,definitions of the situation from other sources and other discursive formationswithin the wider socio-cultural and political structure of which they are adifferentiated part. Philip Elliott has expressed this point succinctly, within amore traditional framework, in his discussion of the way in which the audience isboth the source and the receiver of the television message. Thusto borrowMarxs terms circulation and reception are, indeed, moments of theproduction process in television and are reincorporated, via a number of skewedand structured feedbacks , into the production process itself. The consumption orreception of the television message is thus also itself a moment of theproduction process in its larger sense, though the latter is predominant becauseit is the point of departure for the realization of the message. Production andreception of the television message are not, therefore, identical, but they arerelated: they are differentiated moments within the totality formed by the socialrelations of the communicative process as a whole.At a certain point, however, the broadcasting structures must yield encodedmessages in the form of a meaningful discourse. The institution-societal relationsof production must pass under the discursive rules of language for its product tobe realized. This initiates a further differentiated moment, in which the formalrules of discourse and language are in dominance. Before this message can havean effect (however defined), satisfy a need or be put to a use, it must first beappropriated as a meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded. It is thisset of decoded meanings which have an effect, influence, entertain, instruct orpersuade, with very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological orbehavioural consequences. In a determinate moment the structure employs acode and yields a message: at another determinate moment the message, viaits decodings, issues into the structure of social practices. We are now fullyaware that this re-entry into the practices of audience reception and use cannotbe understood in simple behavioural terms. The typical processes identified inpositivistic research on isolated elementseffects, uses, gratifications arethemselves framed by structures of understanding, as well as being produced bysocial and economic relations, which shape their realization at the receptionend of the chain and which permit the meanings signified in the discourse to betransposed into practice or consciousness (to acquire social use value or politicaleffectivity). Clearly, what we have labelled in the diagram meaning structures 1 andmeaning structures 2 may not be the same. They do not constitute animmediate identity. The codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectlysymmetrical. The degrees of symmetrythat is, the degrees of understandingand misunderstanding in the communicative exchangedepend on the degreesof symmetry/asymmetry (relations of equivalence) established between thepositions of the personifications, encoder-producer and decoder-receiver. Butthis in turn depends on the degrees of identity/non-identity between the codesMEDIA STUDIES119名师资料总结 - - -精品资料欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 名师精心整理 - - - - - - - 第 3 页，共 11 页 - - - - - - - - - which perfectly or imperfectly transmit, interrupt or systematically distort whathas been transmitted. The lack of fit between the codes has a great deal to dowith the structural differences of relation and position between broadcasters andaudiences, but it also has something to do with the asymmetry between the codesof source and receiver at the moment of transformation into and out of thediscursive form. What are called distortions or misunderstandings ariseprecisely from the lack of equivalence between the two sides in thecommunicative exchange. Once again, this defines the relative autonomy, butdeterminateness, of the entry and exit of the message in its discursivemoments.The application of this rudimentary paradigm has already begun to transformour understanding of the older term, television content . We are just beginningto see how it might also transform our understanding of audience reception,reading and response as well. Beginnings and endings have been announced incommunications research before, so we must be cautious. But there seems someground for thinking that a new and exciting phase in so-called audience research,of a quite new kind, may be opening up. At either end of the communicativechain the use of the semiotic paradigm promises to dispel the lingeringbehaviourism which has dogged mass-media research for so long, especially inits approach to content. Though we know the television programme is not abehavioural input, like a tap on the knee cap, it seems to have been almostimpossible for traditional researchers to conceptualize the communicativeprocess without lapsing into one or other variant of low-flying behaviourism. Weknow, as Gerbner has remarked, that representations of violence on the TVscreen are not violence but messages about violence:3 but we have continued toresearch the question of violence, for example, as if we were unable tocomprehend this epistemological distinction.120ENCODING/DECODING名师资料总结 - - -精品资料欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 名师精心整理 - - - - - - - 第 4 页，共 11 页 - - - - - - - - - The televisual sign is a complex one. It is itself constituted by the combinationof two types of discourse, visual and aural. Moreover, it is an iconic sign, inPeirce s terminology, because it possesses some of the properties of the thingrepresented.4 This is a point which has led to a great deal of confusion and hasprovided the site of intense controversy in the study of visual language. Since thevisual discourse translates a three-dimensional world into two-dimensionalplanes, it cannot, of course, be the referent or concept it signifies. The dog in thefilm can bark but it cannot bite! Reality exists outside language, but it isconstantly mediated by and through language: and what we can know and sayhas to be produced in and through discourse. Discursive knowledge is theproduct not of the transparent representation of the real in language but of thearticulation of language on real relations and conditions. Thus there is nointelligible discourse without the operation of a code. Iconic signs are thereforecoded signs tooeven if the codes here work differently from those of othersigns. There is no degree zero in language. Naturalism and realism theapparent fidelity of the representation to the thing or concept representedis theresult, the effect, of a certain specific articulation of language on the real . It isthe result of a discursive practice.Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific languagecommunity or culture, and be learned at so early an age, that they appear not tobe constructedthe effect of an articulation between sign and referentbut tobe naturally given. Simple visual signs appear to have achieved a near-universality in this sense: though evidence remains that even apparentlynatural visual codes are culture-specific. However, this does not mean that nocodes have intervened; rather, that the codes have been profoundly naturalized.The operation of naturalized codes reveals not the transparency and naturalnessof language but the depth, the habituation and the near-universality of the codesin use. They produce apparently natural recognitions. This has the (ideological)effect of concealing the practices of coding which are present. But we must not befooled by appearances. Actually, what naturalized codes demonstrate is thedegree of habituation produced when there is a fundamental alignment andreciprocityan achieved equivalence between the encoding and decodingsides of an exchange of meanings. The functioning of the codes on the decodingside will frequently assume the status of naturalized perceptions. This leads us tothink that the visual sign for cow actually is (rather than represents ) the animal,cow. But if we think of the visual representation of a cow in a manual on animalhusbandry and, even more, of the linguistic sign cow we can see that both,in different degrees, are arbitrary with respect to the concept of the animal theyrepresent. The articulation of an arbitrary sign whether visual or verbalwiththe concept of a referent is the product not of nature but of convention, and theconventionalism of discourses requires the intervention, the support, of codes.Thus Eco has argued that iconic signs look like objects in the real world becausethey reproduce the conditions (that is, the codes) of perception in the viewer.5These conditions of perception are, however, the result of a highly coded, evenMEDIA STUDIES121名师资料总结 - - -精品资料欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 名师精心整理 - - - - - - - 第 5 页，共 11 页 - - - - - - - - - if virtually unconscious, set of operations decodings. This is as true of thephotographic or televisual