Decoding, in semiotics, is the process of interpreting a message sent by an addresser (sender) to an addressee (receiver). The complementary processcreating a message for transmission to an addresseeis called encoding.
Overview
All communication depends on the use of codes. More traditional communication models always include three main elements: a sender, a transmitter, and a receiver (Fawkes 21). The sender is responsible for “encoding” (i.e., selecting information) their message and putting it through a transmitter (i.e., a communication channel or a medium like a video, radio, text messaging, etc.) (Fawkes 21). When the encoded information, put through the transmitter, gets to the receiver, it is the responsibility of the receiver to “decode” (i.e., interpret the message) and respond accordingly with feedback (Fawkes 21).
The communication process cannot work without all its three major parts: the sender/encoder, the transmitter/medium, and the receiver/decoder. If there is no sender/encoder, then nobody crafts the beginning message(s) to send out. If there is no medium/transmitter to put the message through, then the message cannot be delivered to the receiver. If there is no receiver/decoder then a message can’t be decoded and hold any value whatsoever (Eadie and Goret 29). When there is no value to a message the decoder cannot make meaning out of it (Eadie and Goret 29).
When the message is received, the addressee is not passive, but decoding is more than simply recognizing the content of the message. Over time, each individual in the audience develops a cognitive framework of codes that will recall the denotative meaning and suggest possible connotative meanings for each signifier. But the actual meaning for each message is context-dependent: the codified relations between the signifiers in the particular context must be interpreted according to the syntactic, semantic, and social codes so that the most appropriate meaning is attributed.
Away from the communication process itself, decoding has become so second nature in the lives of individuals to the point where we do not even realize we are decoding. When driving, for example, we are using the color of the traffic lights (an encoded nonverbal signal, in this case) as the basis of the encoded messages which we interpret. A green light is an encoded signal telling us (the receivers/decoders) to go ahead. Here, it is the context-dependent meaning – according to universally agreed-upon social codes of road rules – where we appropriately attach meaning to the colors of traffic lights. Overall, these encoded messages, supported by social codes and other factors, “function like dictionaries or look-up tables” for individuals in society (Chandler 178).
Misinterpretations in decoding messages
Although the addresser may have a very clearly defined intention when encoding and wish to manipulate the audience into accepting the preferred meaning, the reality is not that of textual determinism.
What is decoded does not follow inevitably from an interpretation of the message. Roman Jakobson suggests that in the process of sending and receiving messages, “[d]ecoding involves moving from symbol to referent to experience as the constitution of meaning” (Lanigan 73). Not infrequently, the addressees find different levels of meaning. Addressees, or the receivers, decode according to their cultural signs because it is semiotics that often entails “the decoding of cultural signs” (Tiefenbrun 528). When decoding, the receiver must be the one to find the balance between a signifier and a signified (Tiefenbrun 196).
In the dominant hegemonic position (the most symmetrical position), “the viewer interprets the media sign according to the same logic used by encoder-producers” (Meagher 185). For example, if you are a recreational hockey player living in Canada and see a commercial from a Canadian company (the sender/encoder in this situation) for their new line of “ultra flex” hockey sticks, you (the receiver/decoder) will already understand the main benefits of the hockey sticks because you play hockey. In this example, you (the decoder) have something in common with the Canadian company that produced the commercial (the encoder), which allows you to share the same logic used by the Canadian company. When the receiver/decoder interprets the sign using the same logic as the encoder, it can be called a “preferred reading” (Meagher 185).
thumb|Marlboro Advertisement
For example, when analyzing tobacco advertisements, specifically Marlboro and Virginia Slims, they target two very different demographics (Anderson et al. 256). Marlboro targets a male audience that symbolizes “rugged, masculine, independent, and heroic overtones,” whereas Virginia Slims’s target audience is women that convey “women’s liberation, femininity, and glamour” (Anderson et al. 256). These two examples display and answer who is the target audience? Which depends on the demographic. What is the purpose of the product? To sell cigarettes to their target audience, and what is the product? Which is the product of tobacco.
How the interpretation of law uses semiotics
When looking at law itself, it is a composite form where there are individual norms that are formed together to create a whole. Texts incorporate the structural features of the signifiers with which they are built, but they are not conceptually identical to their signifiers as a whole. To state that the legal system follows a Semiotic Mesh Model is to say that legal documents are connected to one another in some way, whether through syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic exchanges between legal actors.