Page 134 - Decoding Culture

RESISTING THE O M I N ANT 127
D
psychoanalytically formed subjects. In developing a model of com­
munication processes based on the semiotically derived
proposition that there were different encoding and decoding
'moments' involved in communication, Hall (1980d, 1997) set the
terms for an alternative account of 'reader-text' relations which
would be more consistent with the CCCS focus on the 'struggle in
ideology'. Furthermore, in seeking to apply this model to a specific
case (the Nationwide television programme) the CCCS media
group were obliged to confront empirical and theoretical problems
that would finally lead away from CCCS orthodoxy and toward
rather different forms of cultural analysis (Brunsdon and Morley,
1978; Morley 1980b, 1981, 1986, 1992). The later stages of that will
concern us rather more in Chapter 7. For the present, the signifi­
cance of the encoding/decoding model lies in what it can tell us
about the mainstream CCCS framework.
The essence of the model is familiar enough, deriving from the
basic structuralist insight, if insight it is, that 'meaningful dis­
course' is always coded. Broadcasting organizations are in the
business of producing such encoded messages, based on the
'meaning structures' available to them and located within the
frameworks of knowledge, relations of production and technical
infrastructure characteristic of such organizations. This is one
'moment' of the communication process. Once constituted in this
way the television programme Oet us say) is made available to an
audience for decoding. They, too, utilize the 'meaning structures'
available to them and work within their specific frameworks of
knowledge, relations of production and technical infrastructure.
This decoding 'moment' yields up the meaning of the discourse.
Or, rather, it yields up a meaning, in as much as the 'codes of
encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical' (Hall,
1980d: 131) and so the meanings derived by audiences may not
coincide with those encoded by broadcasters.

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