Friday, November 25, 2005
Ang on meaning
Ang on meaning: "Criticism of transmission models - Ien Ang
As Ang's criticism is so eloquently expressed, it is quoted in full here:
I would suggest ... that it is the failure of communication that we should emphasize if we are to understand contemporary (postmodern) culture. That is to say, what needs to be stressed is the fundamental uncertainty that necessarily goes with the process of constructing a meaningful order, the fact that communicative practices do not have to arrive at common meanings at all. This is to take seriously the radical implications of semiotics as a theoretical starting point: if meaning is never given and natural but always constructed and arbitrary, then it doesn't make sense to prioritize meaningfulness over meaninglessness. Or, to put it in the terminology of communication theory: a radically semiotic [see the section on semiotics] perspective ultimately subverts the concern with (successful) communication by foregrounding the idea of 'no necessary correspondence' between the Sender's and the Receiver's meanings. That is to say, not success, but failure to communicate should be considered 'normal' in a cultural universe where commonality of meaning cannot be taken for granted.
If meaning is not an inherent property of the message, then the Sender is no longer the sole creator of meaning. If the Sender's intended message doesn't 'get across', this is not a 'failure in communications' resulting from unfortunate 'noise' or the Receiver's misinterpretation or misunderstanding, but because the Receiver's active participation in the construction of meaning doesn't take place in the same ritual order as the Sender's. And even when there is some correspondence in meanings constructed on both sides, such correspondence is not natural but is itself constructed, the product of a particular articulation, through the imposition of limits and constraints to the openness of semiosis in the form of 'preferred readings', between the moments of 'encoding' and 'decoding' (see Hall 1980a). That is to say, it is precisely the existence, if any, of correspondence and commonality of meaning, not its absence, that needs to be accounted for. Jean Baudrillard has stated the import of this inversion quite provocatively:
[M]eaning [...] is only an ambiguous and inconsequential accident, an effect due to ideal convergence of a perspective space at any given moment (History, Power etc.) and which, moreover, has only ever really concerned a tiny fraction and superficial layer of our 'societies'.
Baudrillard (1983)"
As Ang's criticism is so eloquently expressed, it is quoted in full here:
I would suggest ... that it is the failure of communication that we should emphasize if we are to understand contemporary (postmodern) culture. That is to say, what needs to be stressed is the fundamental uncertainty that necessarily goes with the process of constructing a meaningful order, the fact that communicative practices do not have to arrive at common meanings at all. This is to take seriously the radical implications of semiotics as a theoretical starting point: if meaning is never given and natural but always constructed and arbitrary, then it doesn't make sense to prioritize meaningfulness over meaninglessness. Or, to put it in the terminology of communication theory: a radically semiotic [see the section on semiotics] perspective ultimately subverts the concern with (successful) communication by foregrounding the idea of 'no necessary correspondence' between the Sender's and the Receiver's meanings. That is to say, not success, but failure to communicate should be considered 'normal' in a cultural universe where commonality of meaning cannot be taken for granted.
If meaning is not an inherent property of the message, then the Sender is no longer the sole creator of meaning. If the Sender's intended message doesn't 'get across', this is not a 'failure in communications' resulting from unfortunate 'noise' or the Receiver's misinterpretation or misunderstanding, but because the Receiver's active participation in the construction of meaning doesn't take place in the same ritual order as the Sender's. And even when there is some correspondence in meanings constructed on both sides, such correspondence is not natural but is itself constructed, the product of a particular articulation, through the imposition of limits and constraints to the openness of semiosis in the form of 'preferred readings', between the moments of 'encoding' and 'decoding' (see Hall 1980a). That is to say, it is precisely the existence, if any, of correspondence and commonality of meaning, not its absence, that needs to be accounted for. Jean Baudrillard has stated the import of this inversion quite provocatively:
[M]eaning [...] is only an ambiguous and inconsequential accident, an effect due to ideal convergence of a perspective space at any given moment (History, Power etc.) and which, moreover, has only ever really concerned a tiny fraction and superficial layer of our 'societies'.
Baudrillard (1983)"
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