Reception Theory-Hall

Reception Theory was formulated in the 1970's by Stuart Hall (and David Morlie). The theory states that a text does not have a singular meaning, it potentially has thousands, and each meaning is dependent upon the person who is viewing the text. The meaning is influenced by your culture, gender, social status, life experience, religion, ect... 

You create your own meaning-Audience identification. 

This gives power to both ends of the text-audience and creators

There are two parts to the premises:

• Encoding-The person who creates the text put in what they want it to mean-Has certain signs and signifiers to achieve this (genre/camera angles/location/ect)
• Decoding-The audience interprets these signifiers- The creators want us to decode what they set our, however according to our individual experiences we may interpret it differently.

Three basic readings that we decode

• Dominant Reading-What most people will understand from the text and agree what it's about-Fits in with what the creator wants it to mean.
• Negotiated Reading-We basically see it it the intended way, but because of something about the audience member they may see it in a different way (as a result of individual experiences)
• Oppositional Reading-The audience member takes it in a totally different way to how it was intended (women are portrayed in a certain way /feminists may fine it oppressive and deeply offensive).