Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist born in 1915 who developed a theory of textual codes. He described texts as having no single structure or meaning, but rather being like a galaxy of signifiers open to many interpretations through different codes. Barthes identified five main codes that shape how meaning is derived from a text: the hermeneutic code, the enigma code, the symbolic code, the cultural code, and the semantic code.

1. ROLAND BARTHES
THEORY OF HIS ENIGMA CODES
Barthes said “texts my be ‘open’ or
‘closed’.

2. BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT
HIS LIFE-
 Roland Barthes was born on the date of the 12th November
1915 and later tragically died at the age of 64 on the 25th
March 1980. He was a French literary theorist, critic,
philosopher and semiotician (the study of cultural signs and
symbols). He explored in depth a diverse range of fields and
he influenced the development of schools around the while.

3. His codes theory
 Roland Barthes describes a text as: “a galaxy of signifiers,
not a structure, not a structure of signified; 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)

4. Roland Barthes and what he
meant by this…
 the text is like a tangled ball of threads
 Once unraveled, we encounter an absolute wide range of
potential meanings.
 The thread needs to unraveled
 You cab continue by unraveling the narrative from a different
angle and create an entirely different meaning

5. The five codes.
 Linguist Roland Barthes narrowed the action of a text Five
Codes which are woven into any narrative
 The hermeneutic code (her)
 The enigma/proairetic code (act)
 The symbolic code (sym)
 The cultural code (ref)
 The semantic code (sem)