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122 ENCODING/DECODING

if virtually unconscious, set of operations— decodings. This is as true of the
photographic or televisual image as it is of any other sign. Iconic signs are,
however, particularly vulnerable to being ‘read’ as natural because visual codes
of perception are very widely distributed and because this type of sign is less
arbitrary than a linguistic sign: the linguistic sign, ‘cow’ possesses none of the
properties of the thing represented, whereas the visual sign appears to possess
some of those properties.
This may help us to clarify a confusion in current linguistic theory and to
define precisely how some key terms are being used in this article. Linguistic
theory frequently employs the distinction ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. The
term ‘denotation’ is widely equated with the literal meaning of a sign: because this
literal meaning is almost universally recognized, especially when visual
discourse is being employed, ‘denotation’ has often been confused with a literal
transcription of ‘reality’ in language—and thus with a ‘natural sign’, one
produced without the intervention of a code. ‘Connotation’, on the other hand, is
employed simply to refer to less fixed and therefore more conventionalized and
changeable, associative meanings, which clearly vary from instance to instance
and therefore must depend on the intervention of codes.
We do not use the distinction—denotation/connotation—in this way. From our
point of view, the distinction is an analytic one only. It is useful, in analysis, to
be able to apply a rough rule of thumb which distinguishes those aspects of a
sign which appear to be taken, in any language community at any point in time,
as its ‘literal’ meaning (denotation) from the more associative meanings for the
sign which it is possible to generate (connotation). But analytic distinctions must
not be confused with distinctions in the real world. There will be very few
instances in which signs organized in a discourse signify only their ‘literal’ (that
is, near-universally consensualized) meaning. In actual discourse most signs will
combine both the denotative and the connotative aspects (as redefined above). It
may, then, be asked why we retain the distinction at all. It is largely a matter of
analytic value. It is because signs appear to acquire their full ideological value—
appear to be open to articulation with wider ideological discourses and meanings
—at the level of their ‘associative’ meanings (that is, at the connotative level)—
for here ‘meanings’ are not apparently fixed in natural perception (that is, they
are not fully naturalized), and their fluidity of meaning and association can be
more fully exploited and transformed. So it is at the connotative level of the sign
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that situational ideologies alter and transform signification. At this level we can
see more clearly the active intervention of ideologies in and on discourse: here,
the sign is open to new accentuations and, in Vološinov’s terms, enters fully into
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the struggle over meanings—the class struggle in language. This does not mean
that the denotative or ‘literal’ meaning is outside ideology. Indeed, we could say
that its ideological value is strongly fixed—because it has become so fully
universal and ‘natural’. The terms ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’, then, are
merely useful analytic tools for distinguishing, in particular contexts, between not