Signs are inherently polysemic, with meaning organized on a dominant-to-subordinate scale, not fixed.

Evidence

We must now add (c) that the meaning of such a violent act or episode cannot be fixed, single, and unalterable but must be capable of signifying different values depending on how and with what it is articulated. As the signifying element, among other elements, in a discourse, it remains polysemic. Indeed, the way it is structured in its combination with other elements serves to delimit its meanings within that specified field, and effects a “closure,” so that a preferred meaning is suggested. There can never be only one, single, univocal, and determined meaning for such a lexical item, but, depending on how its integration within the code has been accomplished, its possible meanings will be organized within a scale which runs from dominant to subordinate. And this of course has consequences for the other, the reception end of the communicative chain: there can be no law to ensure that the receiver will take the preferred or dominant meaning of an episode of violence in precisely the way in which it has been encoded by the producer. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 797

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hall defines polysemy and ‘preferred meaning’ here — the core move where encoding does not guarantee decoding.
• XREF: This is the direct seed of Hall’s ‘Encoding/Decoding’ essay and the ‘dominant-preferred-oppositional’ reading positions that followed.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that no law guarantees the receiver takes the preferred meaning — the irreducible gap between encoding and decoding — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting idea for media and cultural theory.