Representation: Cultural Manifestations and Meaning-Making Practices

Author: [British] Stuart Hall
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: This book is a textbook on communication studies and sociocultural theory. The author elaborates on how culture is constructed through representation and signifying practices through an overview of cultural studies theory and five thematic cultural case studies. The symbols it uses are arbitrary, hence there is no corresponding relationship with the external material world. It is an explanatory and meaningful world. All participants in the representation process (including producers and consumers) are involved in the struggle for meaning, but this struggle is carried out through discourse. Meaning cannot be purely personal; it is the result of negotiation and representation operations among all parties. Meaning is always biased and has priority. A large number of illustrations in this book are the subject of brilliant analysis of this theory.