Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
“Encoding, Decoding” influence on “Constructions of Illusion”
In her essay, Ramamurthy deduces ideas from Stuart Hall’s Encoding, Decoding.
She uses Hall’s concept of transfer of meaning to form her own idea and claims. Stuart
Hall was born in Jamaica in 1932 and moved to England in 1951 where he enrolled in the
Oxford University. Hall has been an informative figure in literature because of the
brilliant works he has produced. He wrote several books including Situating Marx:
Evaluations and Departures (1972), Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse
(1973), Reading of Max's 1857 Introduction to the Grundrise (1973) and Policing the
Crisis (1978). In his essay Encoding, Decoding, Stuart Hall discuses “how images are
first ‘encoded’ by the producers, and then ‘decoded’ by the viewer” (Hall 607). The
signs and symbols used to transfer the meaning are related with the cultural life of both
the producer and the viewer. Everyone does not interpret these messages the same
though.
As Ramamurthy explains, “our background – i.e. our gender, class, ethnic origin,
sexuality, religion, etc. – all affect our interpretation of [these] signs and symbols”
(Ramamurthy 608). This concept is explained by Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume ad.
This ad would attract a lot more male consumers then female consumers. It plays on the
concept of sexuality because Taylor is objectified. She looks very beautiful and is
portrayed naked. Men tend to receive a different message from this ad then women. Said
in terms of Hall’s essay, the transfer of meaning changes based on the sex of the viewer.
As Stuart Hall explains, “messages are not always read as they were intended to be”
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Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
(Ramamurthy 608). In fact according to Hall, there are three different readings of every
image: a dominant or preferred reading, a negotiated reading, and an oppositional one.
Stuart Hall explains these three readings, “Dominant reading would comply with
the meaning implied by the producer of the image…negotiated reading is one which only
partly conforms to the intended, dominant meaning…the oppositional reading is one
which is in total conflict with the meaning intended by the image producer”
(Ramamurthy 608). Said in a simplified way, dominant reading is when the reader
understands the meaning of a picture exactly the way the producer intended, negotiated
reading is when the reader partly agrees with the producer and the image’s meaning, and
oppositional reading is when the reader is completely against the meaning of the picture.
For example, some women might have an oppositional interpretation of the ad for
Passion in which the producer challenges the notion of ‘womanliness’. Sometimes
people just interpret the meaning for an ad different from the intended meaning. Jill
Posner has collected many examples of “ordinary people producing oppositional readings
through graffiti” (Ramamurthy 608). Robert Goldman also cites an example which was
misinterpreted by many readers. In this commercial, “two people were depicted flying a
kite on a page...the advertiser emptied the figures of content so that the reader could
literally place themselves in the ad” (Ramamurthy 608). However, some viewers viewed
the silhouetted figures as ghosts because of the health and disease warnings which we
have been aware of since childhood. Taking this idea into account we can say that global
advertising cannot work all the time. Advertising giants such as Coca-cola cannot
advertise the same commercial globally because “surely people will find different
symbolic meanings in the same signifiers” (Ramamurthy 608). Ramamurthy has taken
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Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
Hall’s idea of these three readings and deduced her own claim. She says that “Can there
really be worldwide advertising campaigns? People across the world will surely find
different symbolic meanings in the same signifiers” (Ramamurthy, 608). She is making
the claim that global advertising will not work every time and advertisements have to be
tweaked to be compatible with different cultures and she creates this idea out of Hall’s
ideas.
In his essay, Encoding, Decoding, Hall presents the idea that the whole cycle of
the image being produced by the producer and to the point where it is seen and
interpreted by the viewer is a circuit. This circuit starts when the producer creates an
image and its implied meaning, “Production, here, constructs the message…in a sense,
the circuit starts here. Of course, the production process is not without its ‘discursive’
aspect: it too is framed through out by meaning and ideas” (Hall 509). Stuart Hall says
that the producer has to keep in mind the intended audience, historically defined technical
skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, and
assumptions about the audience. All of these things combined shape the meaning of the
advertisement and its affect on the audience. Production and the analysis by the viewer
are related. In Stuart Hall’s words, “Production and reception of the television are not
identical but they are related: they are differentiated moments between the totality formed
by the social relations of the communicative process as a whole” (Hall 509). Those two
processes are related by social relations and are part of this communicative process which
starts when the advertisement is created by the producer, shaped by various ideas such as
intended audience, then viewed and analyzed by the audience which either takes the
stance of dominant reading, negotiated reading, or oppositional reading.
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Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
Ramamurthy’s idea of transfer of meaning is highly influenced by Stuart Hall’s
Encoding, Decoding. Her idea is that the meaning intended by the producer of the image
is not always interpreted correctly by the viewer. She cites Hall’s idea of the circuit
which begins when the producer encodes his message in the advertisement taking into
account the intended audience and other factors. Then, the message is decoded by the
viewer and sometimes this interpretation is not the one intended by the producer. The
viewer either takes a dominant, negotiate, or oppositional stance towards the meaning.
Ramamurthy’s claims are deduced from Hall’s ideas and thus are very similar. All
writers do this at one point or another.
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Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
Works Cited
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding, Decoding.” England: 1973.
Ramamurthy, Anandi, “Constructions of Illusion.” Reading Context. United States:
Michael Rosenberg, 2005. 601-617
“Stuart Hall (cultural theorist).” Wikipedia. June 2006.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)> 11 April 2007.
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Kanwardeep Singh
English 131 A1
Ramamurthy essay
Kan,
The essay is oriented towards re-explaining Ramamurthy’s ideas through an embedding
of Hall. This does indeed showcase your command of Hall’s argument and to a lesser
extent Ramamurthy’s. This approach also allows you to “bring” Hall to Ramamurthy, as
is done in the Hall inflected reading of the Liz Taylor advertisement on pages one and
two. What isn’t covered through this approach, though, is a more evaluative thrust about
the necessity of Hall to parts of Ramamurthy’s argument. This might be an issue with the
claim, which is, “She uses Hall’s concept of transfer of meaning to form her own idea
and claims.” This statement is more of a description than a stance, because a good reader
of Ramamurthy would likely agree with it. The statement could be narrowed down,
perhaps being more precise about what ideas and claims it is referring to. Or the
statement could be revised to have more of an evaluative thrust, something like Hall is
essential to Ramamurthy – so that it is this degree of importance that the essay must try
to support.
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