2. Roland Barthes was born on the 12th November 1915 and died
at the age of 64 on the 25th March 1980. He was a French
literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician (study of
cultural signs and symbols). He explored a diverse range of
fields and he influenced the development of schools.
Roland Barthes
(Basic Info)

3. Roland Barthes describes a text 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 is on the infinity
of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation)
Codes Theory

4. • The text is like a tangled ball of threads
• The thread needs to 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.
What he meant …

5. “Barthes said that texts may
be ´open´ or ´closed´”

6. • The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
• The Enigma/ Proairetic Code (ACT)
• The Symbolic Code (SYM)
• The Cultural Code (REF)
• The Semantic Code (SEM)
Linguist Roland Barthes narrowed down the action
of a text in to Five Codes which are woven into any
narrative:

7. The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
(the voice of the truth)
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.

8. The Enigma/ Proairetic Code (ACT)
(empirical voice)
The way the tension is built up and the audience
is left guessing what happens next

9. The Semantic Code (SEM)
(the 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.

10. The Symbolic Code (SYM)
(the voice of symbols)
This is very similar to the Semantic Code, but
acts at a wider level, organizing 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.

11. The Cultural Code (REF)
(the voice of science)
Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge,
morality and ideology.