Roland Barthes: Semiotics

Roland Barthes: Semiotics

Roland Barthes was born on 12th November 1915 and died on 26th March 1980. He was one of the earliest structuralist or poststructuralist theorists of culture. His work developed the ideas of signification which are used in cultural studies and critical theory today. He was one of the leading theorists of semiotics, the study of signs.

Automatically, we have actions and thoughts which are usually controlled by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions and are dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly. An example of this is traffic lights, when we see the different colours, we know how to react to them as it is a sign that has been established by cultural convention over a long period of time which we learn as children. If we see the red light on a set of traffic lights, we subconsciously know that it means stop. With Barthes' theory, everyone is a semiotician, because everyone is constantly unconsciously interpreting the meaning of signs around them.

Roland Barthes researched how audiences interpret what they see. He argued that: 'The audience look for signs to help them interpret narrative... these deeply rooted signs are based on expectations the audience has due to their prior knowledge of old tales or myths'.

In his narrative theory he suggested texts may be 'open' or 'closed'. Open texts are open to interpretation and can have many different subjective meanings that are individual to the audience. Closed texts however are those that are produced with a single, definitive meaning in mind, rendering any interpretation from the audience inaccurate.

Barthes theory says that every narrative is interwoven with several codes out of the 5 that exist and are marked by the multiple meanings suggested by these codes.
These 5 codes are:
-The Hermeneutic/ Enigma code
-The Proairetic/ action code
-The Semantic Code
-The Symbolic Code
-The Referential Code