Decoding

Decoding is the process of transforming information from a difficult to understand stored symbols format to one that is easier to understand -which is the reverse of encoding. The corresponding verb is to decode. Specifically, it may also refer to:

See also

Decode (song)

"Decode" is a song by American rock band Paramore. The song was released as a single in 2008 from the soundtrack of the film Twilight. It is also included as a bonus track on the international version of Paramore's third studio album, Brand New Eyes.

An acoustic version of this song was released as a part of the special CD/DVD of the Twilight soundtrack. The song was certified Platinum in the U.S on February 16, 2010, selling over 1,000,000 copies. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010 for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Song information

Hayley Williams from Paramore is a Twilight fan and has talked about her love of the books and the song's title:

Critical reception

Alexandra Cahill of Billboard gave the song a positive review by stating that "vocalist Hayley Williams captures the tension and urgency between undead protagonist Edward and mortal love interest Bella with an impassioned, yet restrained performance". Cahill also stated, "expertly crafted follow-up Decode promises to stake a claim at modern rock and top 40 radio".

Decoding (semiotics)

Decoding, in semiotics, is the process of interpreting a message sent by an addresser to an addressee. The complementary process – creating a message for transmission to an addressee – is called encoding.

Discussion

All communication depends on the use of codes. When the message is received, the addressee is not passive, but decoding is more than simply recognising the content of the message. Over time, each individual in the audience develops a cognitive framework of codes which will recall the denotative meaning and suggest possible connotative meanings for each signifier. But the actual meaning for each message is context-dependent: the codified relations between the signifiers in the particular context must be interpreted according to the syntactic, semantic and social codes so that the most appropriate meaning is attributed (for labelling usages by reference to national characteristics, see Americanism).

Although the addresser may have a very clearly defined intention when encoding and wish to manipulate the audience into accepting the preferred meaning, the reality is not that of textual determinism. What is decoded does not follow inevitably from an interpretation of the message. Not infrequently, the addressees find different levels of meaning. Umberto Eco called this mismatch between the intended meaning and interpreted meaning aberrant decoding. This apparent failure of communication may result from the fact that the parties use different codes because they are of a different social class or because they have different training or ability, because they have different world views or ideologies, or because they are from different cultures. David Morley argues that the outcome of decoding will be influenced by pragmatic issues, i.e. whether: