Finally, here comes the topic, which is closely related to semiotics. I spent a lot of time reading and understanding Stuart Hall’s book. The Encoding/Decoding Model of Communication and Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies. And Hall is a sociologist. He was personally influenced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. So in my spare time, I made a special effort to learn about his Prison Notebooks.
The book is a collection of personal manuscripts he wrote in prison. Of course, we also know that political prisoners do not do much physical labor. So he had plenty of time in prison to write this book or to write down some of the things he was thinking about. These manuscripts contain Marxist philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, and social and political phenomena of the time. At the same time, an evaluation is made. Although this is said to be written in prison, many of them are unfinished fragments or scattered articles, but still contains a lot of important ideas. It contains cultural hegemony, national politics, historical materialism, and so on.
Going back to hall’s Ideas of encoding and decoding. It may be more related to communication, but I personally prefer to understand and explain it by means of symbols and media.
So first of all, we have encoding and decoding. The process of coding is built by the message sender. They are often strongly influenced by cultural background and social values. They will choose the language included: symbols and other communication elements to send. This step is coding.
Decoding, on the part of the receiver, takes their own approach to understanding the coder’s thoughts. At the same time, they will also interpret according to their own cultural and social background. This is related to semiotics. It’s interesting that once a message (in this case, a message means all information communicated through a medium, including images, words, and even objects and natural landscapes). Then the right to explain has little to do with the coders, such as the Chinese Dream of Red Mansions. Our descendants can interpret the author’s characters, stories and ideas from countless angles and ways. It’s very interesting. Of course, this is the charm of semiotics and communication. Therefore, the book does not have to be written too well, and someone will interpret it for you later.
But at the same time we have to pay attention to a problem. When the coder sends a message, something called the dominant supremacy position appears. The audience interprets the message in the way the sender intended, consistent with the dominant ideology. That is to say, there is often not much room for interpretation. We are forced to accept the message and interpret it. And align with the ideology of the sender. In other words, these massive messages are likely to have a huge impact on the values, culture and even society of the recipients after being accepted. Let’s use a very simple example to explain this. Take, for example, the superhero movies made by the Marvel company in the United States. It’s always the American superheroes who save the whole person over and over again. And other countries can only hide behind the US. We may not realize so many problems when we watch the movie. But as a result, we are being subtly influenced by the personal values and cultural ideas of America First or American world culture.
And that’s something hall emphasized. Encoding to decoding is not a simple information transfer process. He will be influenced by the cultural, social and linguistic environment. And this fragrance highlights the role of power and ideology in shaping communication, recognizing that message interpretation can vary widely depending on the location and perspective of the sender and recipient.
