Signs and Meanings
By Mara Annalitickah
Roland Barthes coined the phrase “the reader is author.” Barthes was a French theorist of culture and his study of semiotics was renowned around the world. He was born in Cherbourg, France in 1915. When he was an infant his father died in a naval battle. His mother then moved them to Paris where Barthes attended Lycee Montaigne and from 1930–34 he was enrolled at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand. Then in the late 1930’s to the early 1940’s he was educated at Sorbonne with his focus drawn to classical letters, grammar, philology and Greek tragedy. He suffered from tuberculosis on and off for many years, but managed to keep up his studies and even established a theatrical group. He taught in many places including the University of Alexandria in Egypt in 1949–1950. From 1976–1980 he was a chair of literary semiology at College de France, he was considered a leading critic of his generation at this time.
He was interested in not what things mean but how things mean, hence his study of semiotics, which is the study of signs and meanings. His fascination with the meaning of things that surround us in everyday lives broke new ground, showing the possibility to read ‘trivia’ into everyday life as full of meanings. He was influenced early in his study by the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure who also studied signs and signification.
In 1968 his phrase ‘the death of the author’ made its presence, he rejected that the author was the sole originator of the meaning of the written text but in fact the reader was an authority in the interpretation of the written text by the author. The reader is therefore interpreting the written text as they understand it, not necessarily as the author wrote it. The text requires the reader to find out its own meaning within the text.
The phrase ‘the reader is the author’ believes that the person reading the text interprets the text to their own meaning/representation of each word and the words together. That they believe what they are reading has been written by the author but are unaware that themselves are the author because of the readers own interpretation of the text written by the author. The author also could be unaware of this as they have written the text themselves and feel they are the author (the spine of the book shows this) and are not aware that the reader denotes the text themselves thus creating the meaning of the text. The author may not realize that the reader interprets what they have written is as exactly as the author wrote it to the authors own meaning. The reader deciphers what is being said by the author, but the author must realize that each reader will denote the text differently to the next reader, thus the reader is the author. Text can certainly be interpreted in many ways and forms by the reader depending on your intellect and knowledge of language. Everyone reads and sees text and art in their own way, the viewing or reading can also play a part in the environment you are reading or viewing the text or image in, it can sway your mood, bring about memories from your past, and create a new understanding of words in different context that you may not be familiar with.
Roland Barthes certainly made an impression as an outsider being a Protestant in a Catholic culture and being gay, this, I feel must have had a huge toll on his being and his theories may have suffered and maybe not taken as seriously because he was gay. He was a critical voice yelling from the margins. His articulated view of structure and signification is significant in cultural studies and theory this present day.
The author can be seen to take failure or success in their work, the passions and feelings can be lost by the reader’s subjectivity of what the text is saying. The reader may not quite understand what the author is saying or trying to get across in text. It can be a muddled way from author to text to reader through translation may not be the direct intention of the author. The author writes the text for the author the reader reads the text the author has written denoting the text to their own imagery of what the author is saying in the text. The reader there for is the author according to Barthes theories, his method puts many meanings within the written text.
Barthes says “the goal of literary work (of literature as work) [which] is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text. Our literature is characterized by the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its consumer, between its author and its reader. This reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness — he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious: instead of functioning himself, instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum. Opposite the writerly text, then, is its countervalue, its negative, reactive value: what can be read, but not written: the readerly. We call any readerly text a classic text.”
The above quote describes the intertwining of the author and the reader saying that the reader is not a consumer instead the reader is the producer of the text, thus the death of the author and the birth of the reader now exists. The reader does not necessarily read what is written but interprets the authors writing in different codes and voices as the reader reads the writing of the author, step by step reading.
Barthes states the difference distinct in denotation and connotation being, denotation meaning the literal and connotation the second-order meaning, myth. The denotation meaning is what you see or read in an image or text that is what it is actually saying literally. Connotation is what is in the image or text that may not be written or drawn, but suggestive, the myth of something. To explain these words in context I have the following images with denotation and connotation meanings to give you a clearer view of how Barthes theorized signs and meanings.
Denotation exists in the image you can see before you, you see what is in the image, the instant images within the image can be familiar to you, you recognise these things, you understand the meaning you are seeing, it is logical and easy for you to understand and take part in, you feel you know and understand the image before you because you see what is in the image before you own eyes. No-one can take this away from you, your own eyes see the image and the images within and you understand completely what the image is saying to you, telling you what it is all about. It is likely that you think you have seen the whole image and understand it as you see it, you could be unaware that the image can tell you more or you can see more than what is happening in the image, connotations begin to enter you thought process of what this image could be about and what other meanings the image is saying. Depending on the person and what they can see the whole connotation meanings can be endless but the denotations have end, a finished look. Connotations, can bring about the sight of the mysterious, what is the image trying to say, what is the image saying that the viewer cannot see, suggestive connotation to the viewer of the image, but be aware not all images contain connotations, some images are simple and are plain to read and have no other meanings but the one in the image. For example the image of say an ice-cream sign outside a store, you can tell by the image that the store is selling ice-cream, probably the ice-cream in the image you see, there are really no other meanings behind this image.
The image by photographer Sebastiao Salgado has denotations as follows, there is a child in the image, the glass is broken, there is a larger hand holding the child, there is some chequered fabric in the image. It’s easy to read this images denotations, they are pretty straightforward and easy for the eye to see. The connotations open up a wide variety of what this image could be about. The broken glass in this image could suggest a few different scenarios, it could have been from a bullet or a stone thrown at the window, it could be the window of a bus or truck travelling through a war torn area, it could be the bombed house where the child lives. The look on the child’s face may suggest that they are used to the happenings where they live. The person holding the child could be moving the child out of harm’s way. It could be a drug house and has just been raided or robbed. This image is real and hits the core of humanity. It is gritty and strikes a chord within.
Man Ray’s image of the woman has clear denotations, she is semi-naked, her hair is wrapped in a cloth and a cloth covers her lower body, she has violin markings on her back, she is looking to the left, the room is dim. The image looks like the woman’s body is a violin. The connotations could suggest a few things, the violin marking could suggest that a woman is like a musical instrument and to be played and handled with care so she will not go out of tune. It could suggest that music comes from within. Play her and treat her well and she will stay tuned. Woman can be delicate and precious and need to be handled with care. It is subtle and divine and creates an almost poetic image of a woman.
Advertising too has denotation and connotation meanings in the ads that are seen by millions of people every day. This advertisement for Coke is suggesting if you drink Coke your life it will create peace and tranquility, freedom and working together, when in fact if you drink Coke the sugar levels are so high that it is bad for your health. I find this ad strange and fascinating because the power of advertising is very powerful in this image, people believe all they see, this type of advertising can really impact the way we are and being told to be. I believe that drinking Coke will not lead to any of these things happening that are portrayed in this image, but the feeling of drinking this product may in fact cause people to think this way because of the advertising behind it, pushing the boundaries of semi brainwashing.
Writing can be full of all sorts of meanings to the writer and to the reader. Words written can be full of many shapes and forms within the imagination of both the author and the reader.
Barthes quotes ”a text consists of multiple writings, proceeding from several cultures and entering into dialogue, into parody, into contestation: but there is a site where this multiplicity is collected, and this site is not the author, as has hitherto been claimed but the reader; the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any of them being lost, all the citations out of which a writing is made; the unity of a text is not in its origin but in its destination, but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history; without biography, without psychology, is it only that someone who holds collected into one and the same field all traces from which writing is constituted..”
He seems to be saying that writing is layers upon layers of interpretations and meanings, one thing said does not necessarily mean a logical and straightforward meaning, imitation is there for the taking. As the reader you can be reading with a clear mind and gather all the author is writing, you are the guide into the authors words, you are the reader of the words there for you can be the writer of the words. The author does not defy where the text will go and how the text will be read. The reader casts their eye on the words of the author and announces them how they see fit. The author gives the reader the right to read the text and the reader gives themselves the right to read the text how they perceive it.
Barthes had written many books over his lifetime including ‘The Language of Fashion’. Barthes was fascinated by fashion and clothing, this as an interest I can see his semiology would have been an interesting and useful tool in the fashion and clothing world. He was a smart dresser himself. He saw clothing as a language, and indeed it is a language today, you can often tell a person’s job or even monetary wealth by the way a person is dressed, but it can also deceive you, judging the way someone dresses may not be the right denotation!
Roland Barthes died on March 23rd, 1980. His death was the result of a street accident.
