Page 131 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

120 ENCODING/DECODING

which perfectly or imperfectly transmit, interrupt or systematically distort what
has been transmitted. The lack of fit between the codes has a great deal to do
with the structural differences of relation and position between broadcasters and
audiences, but it also has something to do with the asymmetry between the codes
of ‘source’ and ‘receiver’ at the moment of transformation into and out of the
discursive form. What are called ‘distortions’ or ‘misunderstandings’ arise
precisely from the lack of equivalence between the two sides in the
communicative exchange. Once again, this defines the ‘relative autonomy’, but
‘determinateness’, of the entry and exit of the message in its discursive
moments.
The application of this rudimentary paradigm has already begun to transform
our understanding of the older term, television ‘content’. We are just beginning
to see how it might also transform our understanding of audience reception,
‘reading’ and response as well. Beginnings and endings have been announced in
communications research before, so we must be cautious. But there seems some
ground 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 communicative
chain the use of the semiotic paradigm promises to dispel the lingering
behaviourism which has dogged mass-media research for so long, especially in
its approach to content. Though we know the television programme is not a
behavioural input, like a tap on the knee cap, it seems to have been almost
impossible for traditional researchers to conceptualize the communicative
process without lapsing into one or other variant of low-flying behaviourism. We
know, as Gerbner has remarked, that representations of violence on the TV
3
screen ‘are not violence but messages about violence’: but we have continued to
research the question of violence, for example, as if we were unable to
comprehend this epistemological distinction.