Transcript
Media LanguagesBy Lucy Abbott and Liam Wild
Roland Barthes
Barthes (1915-1980) was a
French literary theorists,
philosopher, critic and
semiotician. He explored a
diverse range of fields and he
influenced the development of
schools.
Codes TheoryBarthes stated texts as, “a galaxy of
signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it
has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain
access to it by several entrances, none of
which can be authoritatively declared to be
the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend
as far as the eye can read, they are
indeterminable… the systems of meaning
can take over this absolutely plural text, but
their number is never closed, based as it on
the infinity of language…”
What does this mean?
• The text is like a tangled ball of threads.
• The thread needs to be unravelled.
• Once unravelled, we encounter an absolute
wide range of potential meanings.
• We can start by looking at a narrative in one
way, from one viewpoint, one set of previous
experience, and create one meaning for that
text.
• You can continue by unravelling the narrative
from a different angle and create an entirely
different meaning.
The ‘Five Codes’
Barthes narrowed down the action of a text into Five Codes which are woven into any narrative:
• The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
• The Enigma/Proairtic Code (ACT)
• The Symbolic Code (SYM)
• The Cultural Code (REF)
• The Semantic Code (SEM)
The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
Is the way the story avoids
telling the truth or revealing all
the facts, in order to drop
clues in through out to help
create mystery.
The Enigma/Proairetic Code (ACT)
The way the tension is built
up and the audience is left
guessing what happens
next.
The Semantic Code (SEM)
(Voice of the person)
The semantic code points to any element
in a text that suggests a particular, often
additional meaning by way of connotation
which the story suggests.
Connotation = Cultural/underlining
meaning, what it symbolises.
The Symbolic Code (SYM)
(Voice of symbols)
This is very similar to Semantic Code,
but acts at a wider level, organising
semantic meanings into broader and
deeper sets of meaning. This is
typically done in the use of antithesis,
where new meaning arises out of
opposing and conflict ideas.
The Cultural Code (REF)
(Voice of science)
Looks at the audience wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.
Claude Levi Strauss
Born: 28 November 1908
Brussels, Belgium
Died: 30 October 2009 (aged 100)
Paris, France
Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist
and ethnologist and his work lead up to his
development in the theory of structuralism.
He has been known worldwide as the “father
of modern anthropology”.
Levi-Strauss studied hundreds of
myths and legends all around the
world and from that he found out
that humans make sense of the
world, people and events by seeing
things and using binary opposites.
He also discovered that narratives
are arranged around the conflict of
binary opposites.
Binary Oppositions
Explanation of binary opposition
TRISTES TROPIQUES
He believed that the
“savage” mind had the
same structures as the
“civilized” mind and
that human
characteristics are the
same everywhere.
These observations
culminated in his
famous book ‘Tristes
Tropiques’.
Examples of Binary
Opposition in Narrative
GOOD / BAD
HERO / VILLIAN
FEMALE / MALE
HOT / COLD
FIRE / ICE
BLACK / WHITE
PEACE / WAR
MAN / NATURE
STRONG / WEAK
ATTRACTIVE / UGLY
GOOD / EVIL
YOUNG / OLD
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