Encoding (semiotics)

Encoding, in semiotics, is the process of creating a message for transmission by an addresser to an addressee. The complementary process – interpreting a message received from an addresser – is called decoding.

Discussion

The process of message exchanges, or

codes that, for the most part, unconsciously guide the communication of meaning between individuals. These interpretive frameworks or linking grids were termed "myths" by Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and pervade all aspects of culture from personal conversation to the mass media's output (for code exchange through the mass media, see Americanism

).

Early theorists like

salience (sometimes called foregrounding) and predispose the audience to interpret the whole in the light of the particular. This relates to Gestalt psychology, Max Wertheimer

(1880–1943) examined the factors that determine grouping in cognitive processes:

the fact of grouping signs together predisposes an uncritical audience to perceive the signs as similar;
the audience prefers closure, i.e. it prefers the experience to be as complete as possible and to see things as a whole even though no actual continuity or conclusion is implied; and
the audience prefers an everyman's version of
Occam's Razor
, i.e. the simplest explanations and solutions. In real life that means that assumptions, inferences and prejudices can often fill in gaps. If a conclusion seems to fit the available facts, other possibilities are not considered or are disregarded, producing the suggestion that humans conserve cognitive energy whenever they can and avoid thinking.

If an addresser is writing a speech,

tropes may be used to emphasise the elements that the audience is to focus upon and potentially perceive as predicating a particular conclusion. If images are to be selected, metonymy

may indicate common associational values with the preferred meaning of the text.

References

Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. (Translated by Annette Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape. ([1964] 1967)

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Paladin. (1972)

Chandler, Daniel. (2001/2007). Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge.