Reading notes on Hall (2013) Representation, meaning and language-Feifei Ding

Your language(s) represent you and your culture(s)?

Hall (2003) in the introduction chapter of his edited book Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices primarily explores the nature of representation and its importance in cultural studies. When explaining the statement that “representation connects meaning and language to culture” (p.15), Hall presents three theories of representation: the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist, of which he is supportive of the third one, and spends most of text presenting, critically appraising and summarizing  two major approaches of the constructionist theory: the semiotic and the discursive, each led by Swiss linguist Saussure (signifier and signified) and French philosopher Foucault (discourse Vs. power) respectively. Hall provides quite a few activities and examples to demonstrate how languages (including signs and images) represent meanings and cultures.

Hall’s article offers a good overview of the definition of representation, main different theories, major models of constructionist approach, key theorists and their insights. Despite the large number of concepts and theories, the article is not a hard read thanks to the use of multiple real life examples and engaging activities, sometimes with images. He would like to present “a relatively clear account of a set of complex, and as yet tentative ideas” (p.63) in this field. What I find would make Hall’s work more rounded, is that he could spend a few more lines describing the reflective and intentional approaches and providing examples and theorist development, rather than using the rhetorical questions with adverbs such as “simply” and “only”. Although Hall is not in favor of these two theories, such a complete negative tone plays down the credibility of his support of the constructionist theory.

The concept of “sharing the codes” seems most resonant and valuable to me. The meaning is not out there, but is “constructed by the system of representation”, and is “fixed by the code”. (p.21) Hall points out that children function as culturally competent subjects as they learn the “conventions of representation, the codes of their language and culture”. (p.22) The sense of belonging to a culture presumes “roughly the same conceptual and linguistic universe”. Does that imply that in order to be culturally competent, you need to speak the language of that culture? Does that mean we are not born into a culture, but acquire one? Does that mean that my kids lose the Chinese culture when they lose the Chinese language? Although as an immigrant I do not seek assimilation in a sense that I hope my children speak Chinese and understand and appreciate Chinese culture, it is quite an arduous task. I have witnessed many failures that I am not hopeful. I wish the multiculturalism efforts would be more encouraging than tolerating minority cultures. 

On a separate note, here are some anecdotes about “sharing the codes”. Hall uses the universal traffic lights example, red means stop and danger and green means go and safety. Color codes with similar commonly recognized meanings are applied to most of the stock markets in the world, i.e. green means gain and red means loss. However, in Asian countries like China, Taiwan and Japan, it is the opposite, red means gain and green means loss. Red is symbolic for happiness, harvest and longevity . However, it is not always the case, when you write your name, you are not supposed to use red pen in China, as it is seen as very unauspicious. Some say it is because in ancient time, only serious criminals’ names are written in red, and Chinese Hades uses red pen to check the name of dead. This to some extent proves that things have no meaning, but we construct the meanings, and even within one culture, meanings of same objects can be different depending on the representation.