Stuart Hall suggested three hypothetical interpretative codes or positions for the reader of a text: dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent'; negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions; oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against). Example 1 Consider the experience of visiting Disney World and strolling through Main Street USA. When you celebrate the spectacle of small town atmosphere, wishing you could inhabit this nostalgic environment, you engage in dominant-hegemonic reading. However, if you inhabit this locale with some degree of resistance, noting to others, "this is fun because it's not real," you may be said to negotiate the site's meaning - using it for your own purposes. Further, if you reject the meaning - either by actively mocking it or ignoring it - you read the text from an oppositional perspective. This act of "ideological labor" requires real effort in the face of Disney's "imagineered" environment. However, you can accomplish oppositional reading by noting that which this idealized small town lacks, wondering whose history it celebrates, and imagining alternatives to Disney's sanitized "small world." Example 2 Read it in a separate file Criticism "There is a danger in the analysis of advertising of assuming that it is in the interests of advertisers to create one 'preferred' reading of the advertisement's message. Intentionality suggests conscious manipulation and organization of texts and images, and implies that the visual, technical and linguistic strategies work together to secure one preferred reading of an advertisement to the exclusion of others... The openness of connotative codes may mean that we have to replace the notion of 'preferred reading' with another which admits a range of possible alternatives open to the audience." (Myers 1983, 214-16) Class assignment (group work, done orally): Considering the quotations above, support one of the view points and illustrate it with your own example.