69249454-chandler-semiotics

CODES 155
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8222
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
20
1222
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
4
5
6
7222
confidence, while people who look a lot may tend to be seen as
friendly and self-confident (Argyle 1983, 93). Such codes may sometimes
be deliberately violated. In the USA in the 1960s, bigoted white
Americans employed a sustained ‘hate stare’ directed against blacks,
which was designed to depersonalize the victims (Goffman 1969a).
Codes of looking are particularly important in relation to
gender differentiation. One woman reported to a male friend: ‘One
of the things I really envy about men is the right to look.’ She pointed
out that in public places, ‘men could look freely at women, but
women could only glance back surreptitiously’ (Dyer 1992, 103).
We learn to read the world in terms of the codes and conventions
which are dominant within the specific socio-cultural contexts
and roles within which we are socialized. In the process of adopting
a way of seeing, we also adopt an ‘identity’. The most important
constancy in our understanding of reality is our sense of who we are
as an individual. Our sense of self as a constancy is a social construction
which is overdetermined by a host of interacting codes within
our culture (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Burr 1995). ‘Roles, conventions,
attitudes, language – to varying degrees these are internalized
in order to be repeated, and through the constancies of repetition a
consistent locus gradually emerges: the self. Although never fully
determined by these internalizations, the self would be entirely undetermined
without them’ (Nichols 1981, 30). When we first encounter
the notion that the self is a social construction we are likely to find
it counter-intuitive. We usually take for granted our status as
autonomous individuals with unique ‘personalities’. We will return
later to the notion of our positioning as subjects. For the moment,
we will note simply that ‘society depends upon the fact that its
members grant its founding fictions, myths or codes a taken-forgranted
status’ (ibid.). Culturally variable perceptual codes are
typically inexplicit, and we are not normally conscious of the roles
which they play. To users of the dominant, most widespread codes,
meanings generated within such codes tend to appear obvious and
natural. Stuart Hall comments:
Certain codes may . . . be so widely distributed in a specific
language community or culture, and be learned at so early an