representation definition stuart hall

Stuart Hall and Representation

What is representation.

Stuart Hall believed representation was the “process by which members of a culture use language… to produce meaning”. It is the organisation of signs, which we use to understand and describe the world, into a wider set of values of ideologies. These meanings are not fixed or “real”; they are produced and defined by society.

Systems of Representation

Hall (1997) identified two “systems of representation” – conceptual maps and language.

Conceptual Maps

The first system consists of the mental representations we carry around in our minds. You should have no trouble picturing your friends and family, or the places you have visited recently. Experiences and events remain vivid long after they have concluded. We have the ability to imagine abstract concepts and theories. Even fictional worlds and mythical creatures can be fully realised in our thoughts.

These ideas are all representations of what we might consider to be the real world.

Conceptual Map:

If you have seen a donut, you can visualise it in your mind.

Importantly, we can distinguish once concept from another because we are fully aware of their similarities and differences. We know doors are not the same as windows, up is the opposite of down, and there is a strong contrast between black ink on a white page.

We also recognise the complex relationships between concepts and group them into clusters and categories: colours, types of buildings, emotions, subjects in school, our neighbourhood, faith, the moon and the stars, and so on. By creating systems of concepts, or conceptual maps , we can give meaning to our world.

Although we are individuals with our own perspectives and histories, we actually experience most things with other people and form similar interpretations of the world. This makes it easier for us to exchange our conceptual maps by translating them into signs – gestures, written and spoken language, images and other methods of communication.

The language we use to communicate with each other is the second system of representation.

A Simple Exercise

Hall used a very simple exercise with his students to demonstrate how this representation process worked. First, he would ask them to take a good look around the room and focus on different objects. This would make them conceptualise each object in their minds.

He then asked them what they saw. Of course, his students would use words to refer to the objects which he was able to decode because he understood what they meant.

In this way, representation is the process that links our conceptual map of the world and the meanings we construct through language.

Approaches to Representation

Stuart Hall (1997) summarised three approaches to understanding the representation process: reflective, intentional and constructionist views.

The Reflective View

This approach to understanding representation suggests the signs we use communicate with each other reflect their true meaning because language acts like a mirror to the world.

Visual signs often have some sort of relationship to the physical form of the objects they represent so, in terms of semiotics, Charles Peirce might categorise these signs as icons. However, as Stuart Hall pointed out, a picture of a rose “should not be confused with the real plant with thorns and blooms growing in the garden”.

Ferdinand de Saussure debated if onomatopoeic words and interjections were evidence of the reflective quality of language, but he believed these signs were not organic and there was “no fixed bond between the signified and signifer”. In other words, signs are part of our culture rather than the natural world.

To what extent do news organisations reflect the real world in their reports? Join the debate in our guide to framing which outlines how their use codes and conventions can influence the audience’s interpretation of the story.

The Intentional View

By contrast, the intentional approach suggests we impose meaning on the world through the signs we use to describe it. When you are talking to a friend, the words you use to encode your message will mean exactly what you intended them to mean.

If you have read our guide to Hall’s encoding / decoding model of communication , you will already know he dismissed this approach to understanding the representation process. We may produce media texts, but their meanings are limited by the framework of knowledge of that particular period and culture. Hall also proposed the audience could have a negotiated or even an oppositional interpretation of the text. This leads us to the constructionist approach to understanding representations.

The Constructionist View

Things exist in the physical world. Our conceptual maps are based on reality, but representation is a symbolic practice and process. Remember, Saussure argued there is no natural relationship between the sign and its meaning or concept.

Put simply, we construct meanings by organising signs into a system.

Stuart Hall mentioned the language of electric plugs in the UK to illustrate this approach. Before 2006, red wires were used to carry the current from the power supply to the appliances. The system was changed to match the European standards so brown wires are now live. In this way, colours have no fixed meaning and their definitions can quickly change.

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Representation Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

• Stuart Hall
• Jessica Evans - The Open University
• Sean Nixon - University of Essex, UK
• Description

• updates and refreshes the approaches to representation, signalling key developments in the field

• addresses the emergence of new technologies, media formats, politics and theories

• includes an entirely new chapter on celebrity culture and reality TV

• offers new exercises, readings, images and examples for a new generation of students

This book once again provides an indispensible resource for students and teachers in cultural and media studies. Stuart Hall THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION   Representation, Meaning and Language Making Meaning, Representing Things

The Subject of/in Representation

Paradise Regained

Paradise: The Exhibit as Artefact

This is simply a magnificent collection of chapters, laced together under the guiding light of Stuart Hall's outstanding scholarship. The chapters each exemplify the very best modes of cultural studies writing, theoretically informed, lucid, vividly alive and relevant to students and to general readers across the arts, humanities and social sciences. New material by Stuart Hall is particularly welcome, and will be much appreciated given his key role in the development of post-colonial as well as cultural studies. In particular we see Hall lay out the conceptual groundwork for an extensive study of the media from the viewpoint of 'race' and ethnicity. Angela McRobbie Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

The second edition of Representation should enable it to speak to new generations of students and to continue to serve as the authoritative introduction to the theories and politics of meaning and representation in cultural studies. Anyone interested in these matters, whether student, teacher or simply curious intellect, will be glad for the time spent reading this book. Lawrence Grossberg University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Senior Editor of the journal Cultural Studies

Excellent text that is very accessible to students in both layout and content

A perfect, well written and indispensable introduction to Cultural Studies.

Essential reading for my students. Clear and informative

This book covers a range of critical tourism/representational/social topic areas with great care, sophistication and insight. Fantastic read.

The book covers the points I intended to teach in my course. It is clearly and lucidly written with ample examples. I would strongly recommend this book for my students.

Still a valuable foundational text in cultural studies.

Perfect reader for Political Sociology

How do cultures meet, and what images of culture do we rely on to inform those differences across distances? These are some of the very real issues student face in addressing living and working across cultures. This text is helpful as a reference guide to understanding popular culture, and therefore media more broadly.

Great book but covers only a little of what we look at. It has very relevant chapters for our studies.

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Sample materials & chapters.

Representation: The Work of Representation

For instructors

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• new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics

The X of Representation: Rereading Stuart Hall

• David Marriott
• Lawrence & Wishart
• Volume 96-97, 2019
• pp. 177-228
• View Citation

Additional Information

This essay is a study of the notion of representation – its relation to difference, politics, diaspora, otherness, truth, and doxa – within Stuart Hall’s work. The reevaluation of this concept in terms of dialectics and différance, or of blackness and innocence, is shown to be an abiding preoccupation of Hall’s work. In particular, because blackness (or its notion) is never innocent, this essay explores the consequences of a certain undecidability that attends any encounter between representation and difference. And it is this X – its shaping of black meaning and life – that alerts us to an unsettling tension in Hall’s work that no knowledge or encounter can fill and that leads to a purely negative reassessment of the racial imperatives of certain truths.

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