A powerpoint on Roland Barthes, for A2 media

1. ROLAND BARTHES
Codes theory

2. History
 Roland Gérard Barthes was born on
November 12, 1915, in Cherbourg, France.
 Barthes became known as a leading critic of
his time with his 1977 book, A Lover's
Discourse
 One of his major theories was his codes
theory

3. Codes theory
 Barthes argued that all stories shared
common structures- that are organised in
similar ways and followed similar patterns.
 These structures help us understand who the
characters are and how the story will
progress.

4.  Text needs to be unravelled
 Unravelling can lead to several potential
meanings
 We can look at text from one perspective and
create one meaning
 You can continue by unravelling the narrative
from a range of angles and create new
meanings Barthes then narrowed down this
to Five Codes which can be present in any
narrative:

5. 5 different codes
 The hermeneutic code (HER.)
 The proairetic code (ACT.)
 The semantic code (SEM.)
 The symbolic code (SYM.)
 The cultural code (REF.)

6. The Hermeneutic code (HER.)
 The hermeneutic code avoids telling the truth
and giving information, therefore leaves fact
throughout the video, refers to any element
in a story that is not explained and, therefore,
exists as an enigma for the reader, raising
questions that demand explication.

7. The proairetic code (ACT.)
 The way the tension is built up an the
audience is left guessing what happens next,
in reference to any action that will happen,
this can help to produce cliff-hangers.

8. The semantic code (SEM.)
 The semantic code points to any element in a
text that suggests a particular, often
additional meaning by way of connotation.

9. The symbolic code (SYM.)
 can be difficult to distinguish from the
semantic code and Barthes is not always clear
on the distinction between these two codes;
the easiest way to think of the symbolic code
is as a "deeper" structural principle that
organizes semantic meanings.

10. The cultural code (REF.)
 The cultural code is the voice of science.This
looks wider at the audience cultural
knowledge, morality and ideology, it also
helps to relate to the audience the text more
realistic.

11. Open and closed
 Barthes said that a text can be ‘OPEN’ – that
can be unravelled and have many different
codes
 Or ‘CLOSED’ – that the text can only have
one obvious meaning.

12.  Tom Odell – Another love :
https://youtu.be/e-aaencD-
dY?list=PLef7zrjm655LVEB52zkSGxRXDnXU
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