to emphasize the importance of the semiotic codes involved, and thus to highlight social factors. For semioticians, there is no such thing as an uncoded message, so that - for those who argue that all experience is coded - even 'encoding' might be more accurately described as 'recoding' (Hawkes 1977, 104, 106, 107) . In the context of semiotics, 'decoding' involves not simply basic recognition and comprehension of what a text 'says' but also the interpretation and evaluation of its meaning with reference to relevant codes. Where a distinction is made between comprehension and interpretation this tends to be primarily with reference to purely verbal text, but even in this context such a distinction is untenable; what is 'meant' is invariably more than what is 'said' ( Smith 1988 , Olson 1994 ). Everyday references to communication are based on a 'transmission' model in which a sender transmits a message to a receiver - a formula which reduces meaning to 'content' which is delivered like a parcel (Reddy 1979 ). This is the basis of Shannon and Weaver's well-known model of communication, which makes no allowance for the importance of social contexts and codes (Shannon and Weaver 1949) . Whilst Saussure's model of oral communication is (for its time) innovatingly labelled as a 'speech circuit' and includes directional arrows indicating the involvement of both participants (thus at least implying 'feedback'), it too was nevertheless a linear transmission model (albeit a 'two-track' one). It was based on the notion that comprehension