Key theories 3: Barthes

Roland Gérard  Barthes was a later French literary theorist, essayi, philosopher, critic, and semiotician, and made some important contributions to the study of signs. Although he agreed with Saussure that a sign consisted of two parts, the form and the concept, Barthes believed this relationship was part of a larger model of communication which he called the signification process.

In the first order of meaning, the denotation refers to the literal or explicit interpretation of the sign, such as the dictionary definition of a word. The connotation is an additional meaning which usually expresses an emotion or a value. Denotation is sometimes regarded as a digital code and connotation as an analogue code. To illustrate with an example, the word “green” denotes a colour but it can also conjure up the connotation of feeling envy or to suggest someone is naïve.

However, some signs are used to represent a more complex concept, such as the shared values and ideologies of a particular culture or group. This is the second order of meaning, or signification, which Barthes called myth.

In “Mythologies”, Barthes discussed the glamorous appeal of steak and chips and how the meal was a source of French pride. This prestige is a good example of a myth. He also mentioned the promotional material for the new Citroën DS which represented the car as a “magical object” that should be worshiped like a goddess.

Popular usage of the term 'myth' suggests that it refers to beliefs which are demonstrably false, but the semiotic use of the term does not necessarily suggest this. Like metaphors, myths help us to make sense of our experiences within a culture. They express and serve to organize shared ways of conceptualising something within a culture. Semioticians in the Saussurean tradition treat the relationship between nature and culture as relatively arbitrary. For Barthes, myths serve the ideological function of naturalization. Their function is to naturalize the cultural - in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely 'natural', 'normal', self-evident, timeless, obvious 'common-sense' - and thus objective and 'true' reflections of 'the way things are'. 

In his essay, "Rhetoric of the Image.", Barthes attempts to "submit...the image to a spectral analysis of the messages it may contain". Barthes wished to move toward a clearer conception of how the image (and its linguistic attendants) produces signification. 

He turns to a particular advertising image, one in which a mesh grocery bag lies on the table; its contents: beautiful, fresh vegetables and a box of pasta displaying a brand name. Barthes proceeds by breaking this system of signification into three parts: that of the linguistic message, the coded iconic message, and the noncoded iconic message. 

1. The linguistic message - the Italian name that appears on the package of pasta - itself operates on two levels: denotational, or pointing directly to the name of the company, and connotational, by signifying what Barthes refers to as "Italianicity."

2. The coded iconic message is the totality of all of the messages that are connoted by the image itself: those of freshness, of plenty, of Italianicity (in the yellow, green, and red of the tomato and peppers), and of a certain still-life aesthetics.

3. The noncoded iconic message is simply the literal "what it is" of the photograph, whilst the vegetables, sack and pasta that which we "see" when we look at the image.

After articulating the three levels of signification, Barthes pursues another question: "What are the functions of the linguistic message with regard to the (twofold) iconic message?"; and he provides two functions: anchorage and relay. With anchorage, "the text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image...remote-control[ing] him towards a meaning chosen in advance" In a system of relay, "text...and image stand in a complementary relationship...and the unity of the message is realized at [the] level of the story, the anecdote, the diegesis". Most systems are actually a combination of anchorage and relay and "the dominance of the one or the other is of consequence for the general economy of a work".