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.

Stuart Hall-developed the theory for media texts

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.

They share a similar cultural background and will therefore decode texts differently to people from other cultural backgrounds.