Stuart Hall – Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

“In the constructionist perspective. representation involves making meaning by forging links between three different orders of things: what we might broadly call the world of things, people, events and experiences, the conceptual world – the mental concepts we carry around in our heads; and the signs, arranged into languages, which ‘stand for’ or communicate these concepts. Now, if you have to make a link between systems which are not the same, and fix these at least for a time so that other people know what, in one system, corresponds to what in another system, then there must be something which allows us to translate between them- telling us what word to use for what concept, and so on. Hence the notion of codes” (Hall, 1997: 61).

Hall, S. (1997). Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. Sage.