Cultural Studies, Ethnography (Discussion)

All groups

1. Butler and Fiske both discuss Stuart Hall's theory of media encoding and decoding. What do these terms mean? (Butler discusses it in the section of chapter 13 on ideology.)
   • Fiske then discusses "three broad reading strategies" to account for how decoding operates. (Butler refers to the same principle as "different ideological positions".)
     1. Dominant
     2. Negotiated
     3. Oppositional
2. Fiske paraphrases David Morley: "Morley defines reading a television text as that moment when the discourses of the reader meet the discourses of the text" (302).

Group 4

1. Perform a dominant reading of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 2

1. Perform a oppositional reading of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 1

1. Perform a negotiated reading of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 3

1. What do you feel is the preferred reading of this episode? What is the preferred reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could the preferred reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another? And how well does the preferred reading fit with your own personal reading?

Bibliography

1. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.
2. Robert C. Allen, Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, second edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

External links

• Chapter 13 illustrations