After reading the Encoding and decoding article I found myself a little confused on what the Dominate, negotiated, and oppositional terms were/ what they meant. My original blog question reflected this so when I found out that we were going over it in class I was relieved. The most helpful thing I think we did this week was go over what exactly dominant, negotiated, and oppositional meanings were in groups. By using visuals it was much more helpful to understand exactly how the terms were supposed to be applied. I found that the oppositional reading of an article seems absolutely ridiculous. As i am not an advocate for things it was hard to put myself in a critical position when looking at something as simple and cute as a puppy advertisement trying to sell dog food and trying to come up with a oppositional way of reading it. Over all I really enjoyed doing hands on work like that and think we should do it more often.
Blog post week 3
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You aren't alone in the confusion! I found Hall’s essay to be particularly difficult to comprehend. It was as if the author was trying to outsmart his audience, which I don’t appreciate and after conversing with other classmates and reading their blog posts, it seems as though we are all in agreement as to how challenging his piece was. The class activity did help break down the reading, but I’m still struggling understanding denotative meaning. I do agree with you though that seeking the oppositional meaning in advertisements is a bit extreme, but it does show how much thought goes into promoting products. I could even see some of Williamson's advertising concepts coming into play.