Summary: The Work Of Representation

In the chapter, “The Work of Representation”, Hall argues, “Representation is the production of…meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language, which enables us to refer to…the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events”(17). I agree with this idea that representation doesn’t simply reflect the world, for production cannot be found in a basic reflection, nor can intellectual discourse be formed in a vacuum—we require representation to act as the binding to our concept of language. Representation becomes meaningful through discourse, we all have shared ideas of what things mean because of the media and our shared conceptual beliefs.
For example, let’s refer to Hall’s theory of representation to the process of making soup. Language will represent the broth, and the vegetables will represent concepts, and the pot will represent representation. Now, without the pot, all we have is a puddle of hot liquid and abandoned vegetables, rather than being able to identify the object as soup. Meaning, we need the soup to be inside of the pot in order to make that mental reference and connection that broth + vegetables equates to soup.
Instead, interpretations are always followed by other interpretations, in an endless chain”(42). Another example can be compared to the way certain people talk about their bodies—we can say we are fat, or that we hate our fat, but the word fat is in fact just a word, which represents the yellow deposits under our skin made up of unused caloric energy. However, because of the culture we are all surrounded by, we are conditioned to interpret certain words in certain ways. Today, the word fat is represented with an incredibly negative connotation, so we as a society have an aversion to it, and do not want to see it on our