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Dominant Construction
A semiotic term referring to the preferred or hegemonic reading of a particular message. It takes place when the message's recipient fully shares and accepts the seemingly natural or transparent meaning of the message. Dominant construction may be contrasted either with “negotiated construction,” in which the recipient partly agrees with the natural meaning but somehow modifies it to reflect his or her own position, or with “oppositional construction,” in which the recipient understands the dominant meaning but rejects it in favor of some other position or frame of reference. For instance, a feminist may view a Disney film from the 1950s and interpret it oppositionally as an encoding of gender stereotypes, whereas a dominant construction might fail even to perceive the presence of gender politics.
The ...