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