Interpreting Texts

During Wednesday's series of lectures, one of the other topics was how we interpret media texts. Matthew Hall, one the speakers, introduced me to the Stuart Hall's ideas about 'Encoding/Decoding' texts. Hall was a Jamaican cultural theorist and sociologist who was made famous for introducing this idea. So lets look at this idea; first of all when looking at a media text, we have to figure out what the dominant message is; what has the author encoded into the text? Next we have to think; what might be a negotiated interpretation? Basically, how does the audience decode the meaning, do they accept some of the author's intentions? Do they mis-interpret others? Finally we have consider what an oppositional or resistant interpretation is. How does the audience interpret the same text but generate an alternate meaning to that intended by the author?

Stuart Hall