Rhetoric of the Image by Roland Barthes

This is a well-known essay by one of the leading lights of Semiotics. I read more than the chapter in the reader to include the section on connoted image, downloaded from the internet.

Just as a reminder, the key concepts of Semiotics are:

• Signifier - the something that stands for something else;
• Signified - the idea of the thing the signifier stands for;
• Sign - the combination of the two (conventionally s/S)

So, the signifier DOG signifies furry quadruped with wet nose (Howells and Negreiros, 2012).

Barthes uses form, concept, signification to represent respectively: signifier, signified, sign.

Barthes says images have been viewed as weak in respect of meaning.  He disagrees, using advertising as an example as it is frank in his words, in other words, open as to its signification intentions. 

The three messages

Panzani advertisment:

Panzani advertisment accessed from http://solostudio.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/panzani-barthes-ad.jpg

Probably unique as the advert is less well known for the product than the Barthesian analysis.

Barthes identifies three classes of message within the image:

1. The linguistic message

He sees two kinds of linguistic messages at work: a denoted (or literal) message comprising of the caption and the labels on the produce, and a connoted (or symbolic) message – the word ‘Panzani’ connotes Italianicity. But, although he sees connotation and denotation, because it has only one sign - articulated language - he views linguistic as one message.

2. The coded iconic message (symbolic) = connoted

Barthes identifies four signs representing the symbolic message or connoted image from the non-linguistic part of the image

• The half-open bag signifies return from market
• tomatoes and peppers signify Italianicity
• the collection of objects signifies a total culinary service ("as though Panzani furnished everything for a carefully balanced dish").
• the overall composition is reminiscent of, and therefore signifies, the notion of a still life.

Barthes adds there might a fifth sign: that this is an advertisement which arises from the placing of the image within the magazine and the emphasis on the labels. But this last information eludes signification as the advertising nature of the image is essentially functional. (He later adds that there could be others still, such as the bag representing the 'miraculous draft of fish').

3. The non coded iconic message (literal) = denoted

There is no ambiguity intended or real about the pepper as a pepper or a tomato as a tomato. The signifier and a signified are essentially the same – this is a message without a code. There is no transformation. May be viewed as literal message as opposed to previous symbolic message.

The linguistic message

 

Almost all images, in all contexts, are accompanied by some sort of linguistic message. This seems to have two possible functions:

1. Anchorage – images are prone to multiple meanings and interpretations. They exhibit polysemy - a 'floating chain of signifieds, the reader is able to choose some and ignore others'. Anchorage is used to fix the the floating chain so as to "counter the terror of uncertain signs" and occurs when text is used to focus on one of these meanings, or at least to eliminate any unwanted signifieds. In ideological sense, it may also direct the reader through the signifieds and use dispatching to a meaning chosen in advance. Acts in repressive way
2. Relay – the text adds meaning and both text and image work together to convey intended meaning e.g. a comic strip or film.

The denoted image

We can’t really remove the connotations of an image and thus behold a purely literal, denoted image. If we could we would be comprehending the image at what Barthes calls the ‘first degree of intelligibility’, the point at which we see more than shapes. colour and form, but instead see a tomato. This would be a message without a code and crucially, Barthes identifies photography as the only medium with this characteristic – drawing, on the other hand, is coded at three levels:

1. it requires a set of ‘rule-governed transpositions’, there is no essential nature of the pictorial copy;
2. Drawing requires that significant and insignificant matters are distinguished. Photography cannot intervene within the object except by trickery. There is no drawing without style;
3. Drawing requires an apprenticeship

In photography, the relationship of signifier to signifieds is recording rather then transformation. 

He identifies the specific characteristic of the ‘pure’ photograph as being an object that is here-now in the present, but which connects to something that undisputably existed in the past.

The role of the denoted image in the overall image structure/meaning is one of naturalizing the symbolic message – supporting and contextualizing the connoted elements, making them innocent, a sort of being there element.

The Rhetoric of the image (continued the article beyond the reader by download of article)

Analyzing the connotations of the image is a challenging task fraught with a number of difficulties. One of these is that each image can connote multiple meanings, we saw four earlier and there are probably more. Which ones are taken, depends on the viewer. A meaning is derived from a lexicon, which is a body of knowledge within the viewer. One lexia mobilizes different lexicons. So meaning is constructed not solely by the creator, but also by the consumer, and the intersection of his/her lexicon(s) with the signs contained in the image. Barthes refers to the collection of lexicon within a person, as his/her idiolect.

A further difficulty with analyzing the connoted signifieds is that there is no apt language for expressing or articulating them. The common domain of signifieds of connotation is an ideology.

Barthes calls the signifiers within a particular medium (or ‘substance’) the connotators. So, the connotators within an image are all the visual elements that can be used to connote signifieds. The entire set of such connotators is the rhetoric, so the rhetoric of the image is all the visual elements within an image that can be employed as signifiers. Barthes contends there is a single rhetorical form, comon to dream,literature an image. Rhetoric of the image is specific insofar as subject to physical constraints of vision but also 'general' in respect of the way figures are formal relations of the elements. He stresses that not all the visual elements are connotators (they are scattered traits) so there always remain purely denoted elements within the frame.

Reference:

Howells and Negreiros (2012) Visual Culture. Revised 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press