1. Stuart Hall Gemma Davey

2. General Information Born: 3rdFebrurary 1932 Won a scholarship at Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) Cultural theorist focusing on racial thinking in the UK He argues that the media appear to reflect reality whilst in fact they construct it

3. Encoding and Decoding Audience reception theory: Dominant or preferred reading – the reader fully shares the text codes and accepts the preferred reading (they will read it the way the author intended) so that the code seems ‘natural’ and ‘transparent’ Negotiated reading – this is where the audience accepts part of the views presented in the media text and but has their own views as well Oppositional reading – this is where the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own meaning of the text

4. Polysemy This refers to a sign, that has the ability to have multiple meanings It is to do with how certain people (e.g. gender or cultures…) interpret certain signs Examples: A black dress Nodding your head

5. Examples Black dress Sign of mourning Evening dress Inappropriate for a wedding as according to tradition it brings bad luck Nodding your head In countries such as Bulgaria, parts of Greece, Albania, Turkey and Iran they nod their heads to mean no and tilt them from side to side to mean yes