"Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone is really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men ." - Karl Marx, The German IdeologyWhat is language other than encoding one's consciousness then distributing it in the form or words, pictures, movements, etc. for someone to then decode. Hopefully they get some kind of accurate meaning from it. According to philosophers like Plato, the only way to achieve truth was through meaningful discourse (or as Marx calls it, "intercourse"). For them, the truth does not exist unless it is communicated. Although more modern philosophers like Stuart Hall believe that "reality exists outside of language," they also concede that "it is constantly mediated by and through language and what we can know and say has to be produced in and through discourse (Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding, p.166-167)." So, even if the truth or reality does in deed exist outside of language, it still has to be communicated effectively to have any meaning.
According to Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, "the linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image (p.78)." The concept (signified) is invoked by the sound image (signifier). In order to communicate effectively with each other, two (or more) human beings must know the same signifier/signified "code." Without this basic concept, communication can be very hard if not impossible. "If no 'meaning' is taken, there can be no 'consumption (Hall, p.164)."
My father-in-law recently had his hearing checked, and apparently the doctor said that he has some frequency damage that makes it hard for him to hear the female voice. Assuming this is true, it is difficult for his ear to decode what is encoded in the female voice. However, some people might contend that most men have a hard time decoding anything that females encode and try to communicate with them. However, this may actually have to do with encoding and decoding different levels of a sign. "The level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and associations, is the point where already coded signs intersect with deeply semantic codes of a culture and take on additional, more active ideological dimensions (Hall, 168)." For example, taking part of the Marx quote I used earlier, " intercourse with other men," out of context can be lead to quite a misunderstanding, because people can read into different (and wrong) connotative levels of that particular phrase.
According to Dictionary.com, the most dominant connotation (or definition) of the word intercourse is"dealings or communication between individuals, groups, countries, etc." The second most do
minant connotation is "interchange of thoughts, feelings, etc." and finally the third (and least) dominant connotation is "sexual relations." This may no longer be accurate in everyday language, which is why "we say dominant, not 'determined', because it is always possible to order, classify, assign and decode an event within more than one 'mapping' (Hall, 169)."The example above and others like it are constantly in the mind of the communicator. The 6:00 news and most local newspapers tend to make sure that they communicate in as straight forward a way as possible, making sure that the correct information gets out to the intended audience and that the right message gets across. "Broadcasters are concerned that the audience has failed to take the meaning as they - the broadcasters - intended...that viewers are bit operating within the "dominant" or "preferred" code. Their ideal is "perfectly transparent communication" (Hall, 170). However, other some media intended for less broad, possibly more intelligent, audiences, like the NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me actually want the consumer to read the less dominant code, opting for a more tongue in cheek form of communication. The larger the audience's vocabulary and ability to decode the communicated material, the richer the potential for true, in-depth communication.
Marx believed that "the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections (German Ideology, Ch. 1)." In his opinion, the more people an individual really communicated and identified with, the richer his pool of knowledge was. Although, I can't say that I agree with everything that Marx says, I do agree with this claim. The more real connections a person has in his environment, be it at home, at work, or in a community, the better off that person is. Feeling as though you are understood by someone is one of the best, most satisfying feelings in the world. Second only to someone completely understanding you and liking you anyway.
Thanks Mary for doing your hard work with these difficult texts and bringing various readings into the discussion. Yes, encoding/decoding dynamics can cause problems and can alert communicators to the need to vigilantly be clear and accurate. The subject of “preferred” code becomes more complicated with America’s increasingly-diverse multi-cultural society.
ReplyDeletePresident Bush had really good time explaining political situation through baseball metaphor which in return created problem (big) for newspapers around the world since baseball is not well known sport outside the US (with some exceptions)...
ReplyDeleteAs surprised as I am to be agreeing with any of Marx's points, I also agree with his idea that "the more people an individual really communicated and identified with, the richer his pool of knowledge was." This, to me, is the best part of modern social media applications such as FB, Twitter and so on. Thanks to twitter, I'm able to learn things from people I may never meet but who I believe provide interesting content in their postings. My FB page is a little more nuanced in that I carefully select who I want to share information with and I max out my usage of the privacy settings, but even there I still learn things that I wouldn't necessarily have heard about without the portal.
ReplyDeleteAs a former newspaper editor, I found the decline of newspapers lay with the industry's obsession with trying to deliver what readers want, just as, say, a shoemaker like Nike might strive to create a line of shoes that filled a market need. The focus on delivering what the reader wants translated into a narrowing of the spectrum of coverage and commentary. Being overly focused on "market forces" made newspapers cautious about offending consumer sensibilities, which meant squeezing out ideology that was "too radical" for their sensibilities. The result became that much of what we see passed off as local news on both TV and in daily newspapers is publum.
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