Reception Theory

• Reception theory emphasizes the reader response from a text.

• It is a form of reader response literary theory that was developed in the 1960’s by Hans-Robert Jauss.

• Stuart Hall later developed it for media and communication studies and the theory is most influential from the 1980’s onwards.

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• Stuart Hall’s approach to textual analysis is based on ‘negotiation’ and ‘opposition’.

• This means that texts do not have intrinsic meanings but instead have meanings encoded into them which are then decoded by the reader.

• The way a reader decodes a text is dependent on sociological factors such as age, past experiences and their own beliefs.

• The meaning of a text is therefore created through the relationship between the text and the reader.

• When a group of readers share a similar cultural background it is more likely that they will decode a similar meaning.

• If a reader has a different cultural background to the producer of a text the less likely it is they will decode the meaning that the producer intended.

• Producers can try to encourage readers to gather the intended meaning in their text by encoding it but it is still relative to the reader how they decode it.