Decoding (semiotics)

More traditional communication models always include three main elements: a sender, a transmitter, and a receiver (Fawkes 21).

Overall, these encoded messages, supported by social codes and other factors, “function like dictionaries or look-up tables” for individuals in society (Chandler 178).

[3] 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.

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).

[5] In finding a balance, however, receivers engage in an “analytical quest” that may result in them inferring a completely unintended meaning that the encoder/sender did not intend (Tiefenbrun 195).

David Morley argues that the outcome of decoding will be influenced by pragmatic issues, i.e. whether: Further, Umberto Eco suggests a distinction between closed texts which predispose a dominant interpretation and more open texts which may have latent meanings or be encoded in a way that encourages the possibility of alternative interpretations.

Note that most times the oppositional position occurs because the decoder sees the message as either deceptive or as a misrepresentation of the real world (Meagher 185).

Since advertising works to persuading buyers to purchase goods and services, ads can display various messages (Zakia, Nadin 6).

These advertisements often contain messages through images and words that help consumers interpret these symbols and signs (Zakia, Nadin 6).

[7] 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).

[9] In terms of semiotics, a lawyer's attempt to grasp the signs of the code, to explain the law, is called a decoding process, i.e., a method that is supplied to solve problems created by deviations (shifts in meaning) and questions about intents that are buried in the code.

[10] Semioticist Bernard Jackson points out that legal language is a medium of communication for a specialised set of people known as jurists.