Page 137 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

JENNIFER DARYL SLACK 125

thus a way that many people—including myself—have come initially to
understand the space articulation theorizes. Third, articulation as it is
developed in relation to communication comes closest to ‘looking like’ a
theory and method. Hence it is this site where it might most easily be
disarticulated from its political, epistemological and strategic traces.
The study of communication was built on the model of sender-receiver,
the components of which are solidified in Laswell’s definition of
communication as ‘who says what in which channel to whom with what
effect’ (Laswell, 1971). Each component has, in this model, its own
isolatable intrinsic (or essential) identity. Neither the components nor the
process are articulations. In considering the process of communication,
what is sought is the mechanism whereby correspondence between the
meanings encoded (the what) and the effects that meaning generates is
guaranteed.
While working with a still-recognizable model of transmission, Hall’s
‘Encoding/decoding’ (Hall, 1980b) challenges the simple assertion of
intrinsic identity by insisting that the components of the process
(sender, receiver, message, meaning, etc.) are themselves articulations,
without essential meanings or identities. This move compels a rethinking of
the process of communication not as correspondence but as articulation.
The tension between the reliance on the mainstream model of encoding/
decoding and an articulated model of the communication process is
palpable in ‘Encoding/decoding’ as well as in the work of David Morley
(1980), who used the developing articulated model to analyse the
relationship between the encoded and decoded meanings of television
news; and they are particularly interesting in that regard.
What comes to be understood is that if each component or moment in the
process of communication is itself an articulation, a relatively autonomous
moment, then ‘no one moment can fully guarantee the next moment with
which it is articulated’ (Hall, 1980b:129). The insistence that the autonomy
is only relative (drawing a link to Althusserian structuralism) rescues
articulation from the brink of a ‘necessary non-correspondence’ and allows
Hall and Morley to acknowledge that some articulations—the discursive
form of the message, for example—work from more privileged—or
powerful—positions (Hall, 1980b; Morley, 1981).
Hall continues to develop this notion of power and privilege and,
drawing on Gramsci, argues that some articulations are particularly
potent, persistent, and effective. These constitute, for Hall, ‘lines of
tendential force’ and serve as powerful barriers to the potential for
rearticulation (Hall, 1986b:53–4). With respect to contemporary
communication practices, he depicts communicative institutions, practices
and relations as posing that kind of barrier. They have become a ‘material
force’ dominating the cultural (Hall, 1989:43).