ABSTRACT

The notion of code may be defined as the shared rules of interpretation which enable a Sender (S) and Receiver (R) successfully to encode and decode messages which are transmitted from S to R (Thibault, in press b). In this way, thoughts, ideas, etc. are said to be 'communicated' in the process of transmission. In my reading of Saussure, the language system is not a code in this sense; rather, it is a meaning-making resource (Chapter 3). Meanings, in this second view, are not 'transmitted' and, hence, 'communicated' by S to R; rather, they are jointly made or constructed by the ways in which interactants co-deploy the available social-semiological resources on a given social occasion of discourse. This is a significant difference. A central thesis of this book is that Saussure's theory belongs to the second view. However, it is the notion of code which is at issue here.