Hall's 'Encoding, Decoding

This article looks at the process of mass-communication as discursive, resting upon the articulation of links existent between differing states within a chain or loop (from the broadcasting institution, via circulation, to the audience). The author describes this system as an open one,receiving other discursive formations from the wider social and political framework. This system is created through a series of determinate moments in which information is either encoded or decoded. The information passed yields its meaning through the dominating formal rules of discourse and language, terminating in 'realisation' on the part of the receiver. Hall uses this diagram of communication to reveal the broadcasters' notion of 'perfectly transparent communication' as being in actuality 'systematically distorted information'.
In order to do this Hall leads the reader through an explanation of the above-mentioned chain, from production to consumption, and introduces linguistic theory to demonstrate the way in which communication occurs in a discursive sense (through denotation, connotation, iconic signs, etc.). He then introduces the idea of 'dominant' structures that are based on performative rules. These act to enforce or induce preferrence of one semantic domain over another.

I found that this is where the article got the most interesting. He mentions disparate signs 'contracting' with one another, resulting in a continuous rearrangement and perscription of where, into which 'awareness of one's total environment', they belong. He talks of the decoding of the event as possibly fitting within a limit of of dominant definitions, these resulting from a process of construction and articulation and not a 'natural' position (he claims there is no natural position). Because of this he is able to look at the discrepencies between the process of encoding and that of decoding, and the various possible positions of the receiver in terms of the systematic production of a message.
His idea of the receiver as being wthin the dominant hegemonic position, negotiated position or oppositional position I found to be extremely well thought out, clearly explained, and very relevant to the present. Along with identifying a huge problem he also presents, in some sense, a solution. If it is possible to wear away at the conflicting structure of the negotiated position, some situations could possibly form out of realisations that are free of the dominating thought system....if it is a matter of logic rather than belief it may be less of a longshot to think in terms of a shift in the believability of the media as an objective source.