Roland Barthes: reading image

Roland Barthes is a French semiotician and cultural theorist famous for his ideologically inflected analysis of images, texts and the “myth” of popular culture (Chandler, 2007). Barthes focuses on studying the meaning of images.

He departures from three questions to read images:

1. How does meaning enter the picture?

2. Where does it end?

3. What is beyond this “meaning”?

Barthes (1967) takes linguistic messages and categorizes them into denotative and connotative meaning. He defines denotation as the simple description of what, or who is represented and connotation as the ideas and values expressed through what was being represented, and through the way in which they were represented. Accordingly, denotation is the literal or obvious meaning. The sign, in this case, consists of a signifier, linguistic elements, and a signified, the represented concept or idea.

However, most semioticians, including Barthes himself, argue that no sign is purely denotative, lacking connotation. There can be no neutral, objective description which is free of an evaluative element. Chandler (1994)

argues that connotation produces the illusion of denotation, the illusion of language as transparent and of the signifier and the signified as being identical.

Thus, denotation is just another connotation.

What is more, Barthes (1967) identifies two concepts. The first is

“anchoring” which occurs when linguistic elements serve to anchor the preferred reading of the text or image. They direct the reader among various signifieds and guides him/her toward a meaning selected in advance; in this case, the sign acquires an ideological function. The other concept is “relay”

which describes the complementary relationship between text and image. This occurs when both verbal and visual signs combine into a higher level of message where both of them are needed to understand the intended meaning.

In his significant book Mythology (1991), Barthes explains a double theoretical framework: one is an ideological critique bearing on the language of so-called mass culture; another one is a first attempt to analyze semiologically the mechanics of this language.

3.4.1 Image rhetoric: metaphor and metonymy

Metaphor is widely used in our daily life so that it is always used as an

umbrella term that covers other figures of speech such as metonymy (Chandler, 2007). However, they should not be mistaken for each other due to its own specific usage. Lakoff and Johnson state that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff

& Johnson, 1980, p.5). In semiotics, metaphors involve more than that.

Chandler (2007) illustrates that “a metaphor involves one signified acting as a signifier referring to a different signified.” Typically, metaphor illustrates an

abstraction in a well-defined model.

Metaphor is initially unconventional and because it apparently disregards “literal” or denotative resemblance. According to Peirce’s sign modes (1931-1958), resemblance indicates metaphor involves iconic mode.

However, to some extent, a metaphor can also be considered as symbolic when a resemblance is oblique (Chandler, 2007). Interpretation is required to

understand metaphors and in the process, it may involve social conventions.

Metaphors are not only verbal but can also be visual. Visual metaphor also involves a function of transference, transferring certain qualities from one sign to another (Chandler, 2007). Advertisers often use visual

metaphor to explain the meaning that cannot be expressed by words.

McCracken (1987) explains that advertisers need to differentiate products from one to another to reach consumers, and they do this by associating with

products with certain social values. In semiotics, they create a new signified by associating two signifiers and transfer the signified through the association.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) category three fundamental concepts of different metaphors:

1. Orientational metaphor - - primarily relates to spatial dimension;

2. Ontological metaphor - - associates with activities, emotions and ideas with entities and substance;

3. Structural metaphor - - interact one concept with another (e.g.

time is money).

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that though metaphors are not arbitrary, they are derived from cultural, social context. Dominant metaphors tend to reflect and influence value in a culture or subculture.

Metonymy is another figure of speech that is based on various indexical relationships between signifieds, especially by the substitution of effect for cause (Chandler, 2007). Wilden (1987) defines that “metonymy is the evocation of the whole by a connection. It consists in using for the name of a thing or a relationship, an attribute, a suggested sense, or something closely related, such as effect for cause… the imputed relationship being that of continguity.”

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) draw three types of metonym as:

Producer for product (She own a Picasso);

Object for user (The ham sandwich wants his check [bill]);

Controller for controlled (Nixon boomed Hanoi).

Like metaphors, metonyms can be verbal and visual as well.

Metonyms are more culturally based on than metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Metonyms are indexical and symbolic, while metaphors are of mere iconicity or of symbolism.

Jakobson (1956) argues that a metaphorical term is connected with that for which it is substituted on the basis of similarity or contrast, metonymy is based on contiguity or proximity.

Identifying image rhetoric can help to understand how

advertisements embed cultural meaning and how do they transfer the meaning from cultural context to products and consumers. In the analysis chapter, I will explain how the selected advertisement use metaphor and metonymy to

transfer sex culture to condom advertising.

3.4.2 Denotation and connotation

According to Roland Barthes, there is another way to interpret visual signs.

Barthes classifies signs into two levels, one is denotative level; another is connotative level (1967). He claims that denotative level of sign stands for surface or literal meaning in a signifier. Denotative meaning can be easily interpreted by its appearance. Give an example, a picture of a dog can be interpreted as dog, not cat.

The second level of sign is connotative level that is harder to interpret and embedded with deeper cultural meaning. The connotative

meaning can be determined by the group of people when it is being used. And it might vary from culture to culture. In Chinese culture, the connotative meaning color red is luckiness, while in the West it connotes danger.

What is more, more scholars have extended these signs to a broader system of meaning and ideology. Hall (2001[1980]) designates it the ‘meta code’ or dominant code, and Barthes (1991) refers to it as ‘mythology’. Barthes (1991, p.123) notes that “myth occurs in a ‘second-order semiological system’

established upon a denotive sign, which is the first-order semiological system that comprises signifier and signified.” I will adopt Barthes’s myth into part of analysis in this thesis. Based on the analysis of visual images, semiotics is used to examine and interpret the series’ embedded cultural meanings.

3.4.3 Anchorage and relay

Barthes has also explained the relationship between other semiotic elements and text in a multimodal context. Barthes defined two concepts: anchoring and replaying. He notes“Anchorage is the most frequent function of the linguistic

message and is commonly found in press photographs and advertisements. The Function of relay is less common (at least as far as the fixed image is

concerned); it can be seen particularly in cartoon and comic strips.” (Barthe, 1967, p.275) In visual images, linguistic elements serve to anchor in images, guide people to receive the meaning. In this case, the sign acquires an

ideological function. “relay” explains the complementary relationship between text and image. It means in order to understand the meaning of image, both verbal and visual signs are essential.

Apparently, the two functions of the linguistics message can coexist in one iconic whole, but the dominance of the one or the other is of consequence for the general economy of a work.