Roland Barthes semiotics theory

Roland Barthes was born in Cherbourg, France on November 12 1915, and he died on March 25 1980 in Paris and he was known as a French essayist and social and literacy critic on semiotics. Roland Barthes studied at the university of Paris which is where he took a degree in classical letters in 1939 and in. grammar and philology in 1943. In 1976 he became the first person to hold the chair of literacy semiology at the Collage of France. Roland Barthes believed in the five codes that semiotics used, The Hermeneutic/Enigma code, The Proairetic code, The Semantic code, The Symbolic code, and The Referential code. He believed that every narrative lies into several of the codes, and that there will be more than one of five codes that describe the meaning of text. For example, a sign. When we look at a drawing, a photo, or a word, it is known as a signifier as it is the thing/item, or the code that we ‘read’, then we see the idea or meaning being expressed by that signifier and we know that as being the signified. 

The five codes were used to narrow down the action of the text, The Hermeneutic/Enigma code is the way the story avoids telling the audience the truth or avoids revealing facts which creates mystery.  The Proairetic code is the way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next. The Semantic code refers to any element in a text that suggest a particular or additional meaning by way of connotation (cultural/underlining meaning, what it symbolises) which the story suggests. The Symbolic code is a wider level of the semantic code as it organizes semantic meanings in to broader and deeper sets of meaning. For example, it is usually done with the use of antithesis which is where the new meaning arises out of the opposing and conflict ideas. The Referential code looks at the audience's cultural aspect as it indicates anything in the text which refers to an external body of knowledge which can be historical events, scientific discovery’s, and the cultural knowledge. 

Roland Barthes theory effects everyone but we are unconscious of it as we have all grown up adapting to and influenced to what different signs mean, for example, when driving along in a car and you come across a red light at the traffic lights we stop the car. This is because we automatically relate the colour red to stop, and this is the same with road signs as many have a red boarder that we automatically assume means danger.