Roland Barthes: Rhetoric Image

Roland Barthes

Rhetoric of the Image

P33

Important problem facing the semiology of images: can anaological representation (the ‘copy’) produce true systems of signs nd not merely simple agglutinations of symbols?

‘language’ of gesture — the moment such communications are not doubly articulated

linguistic nature of the image

the image is re-presentation, which is to say ultimately resurrection.

the limit of meaning, it permits the consideration of a veritable ontology of the process of signification. How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?

advertising the signification of the image is undoubtly intentional;

p35

linguistic message

the composition of the image, evoking memory of innumerable alimentary paintings, sends us to an aesthetic signified: the ‘natural morte’ or, as it expressed in other languages, the ‘still life’; the knowledge on which this sign depends is heavily cultural.

I am speaking, except in a deliberately reflexive system such as literature.

I continue to ‘read’ the image, to ‘understand’ that it assembles in a common space a number of identifiable (nameable) objects, not merely shapes and colours.

the relation between thing signified and image signifying in analogical representation is not ‘arbitary’ (as it is in language), it is no longer necessary to dose the relay with a third term in the guise of the psychic image of the object.

message without a code.

P36

That knowledge is not nil, for we need to know what an image is

the photograph analysed offers us three messages: a linguistic message, a coded iconic message, and a non-coded iconic message.

(EXPLAINATION GIVEN IF NEEDED)

linguistic sign of a signifier and signified

explanation of the role of the image in society

literal message appears as the support of the ‘symbolic’ message. Hence, knowing that a system which takes over the signs of connotation, we may say immediately that the literal image is denoted and the symbolic image connoted.

Does the image duplicate certain of the informations given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add a fresh information to the image?

P37

Today, at the level of mass communications, it appears that the linguistic message is indeed present in ever image: as title, caption, accompanying press article, film dialogue, comic strip balloon. Which shows that it is not very accurate to talk of a civilisation of the image — we are still, and more than ever, a civilisation of writing.

What are the functions of the linguistic message whith regard to the (twofold) iconic message? There appear to be two: anchorage and relay.

denoted description of the image (a description which is often incomplete)

helps me to choose the correct level of perception, permits me to focus not simply my gaze but also my understanding.

When it comes to the ‘symbolic message’, the linguistic message not longer guides identification but interpretation, constituting a kind of vice which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating, whether towards excessively individual regions (it limits, that is to say, the projective power of the image) or towards dysphoric values.

P38

The text is indeed the creator’s (and hence society’s) right of inspection over the image; anchorage is control, bearing a responsibility — in the face of the projective power of pictures — for the use of the message.

While rare in the fixed image, this relay-text becomes very important in film, where dialogue functions not simply as elucidation but really does advance the action by setting out, in the sequences of messages, meanings that are not to be found in the image itself.

distinction between the literal message and the symbolic message is operational; we never encounter (at least in advertising) a literal image in a pure state.

P39

Does the coding of the denoted have consequences for the connoted message?

P40

This is without a doubt an important historical paradox: the more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning. [. . .]