Post four - Barthes and semiotics.

This week I am tackling Roland Barthes and his discourse on social semiotics. Barthes’ text A Lover’s Discourse (1978) is a series of fragmented essay style musings on the rhetoric that exists in popular discourse surrounding the verbal interaction between lovers.

Chandler (2007, pg. 2) describes semiotics as being more in depth than the basic ‘study of signs’ definition, but of being the study of anything that ‘stands’ for something else. This would include “words, images, sounds, gestures and objects“ (p. 2), leading to a broad study of “how reality is represented” (pg. 2). Chandler goes on to describe how modern semiotics stems from two schools of thought – the Swiss linguist Saussure and American philosopher Peirce.

Barthes follows in the Saussurean tradition, with his interest in linguistics and language leading him to write A Lover’s Discourse in an attempt to produce a truly neutral document, one that would not lead the reader with implied meanings or culturally understood contexts in the language used.

His narrative titled Waiting consists of six small paragraphs of the internal dialogue his character endures whilst anticipating the arrival of another person, perhaps a date. The paragraphs chart emotions felt, whilst trying to rein in these emotions, and maintain a sense of ‘proportion’ (Barthes, 1978, pg 37). The language used is evocative, yet not. His opening paragraph clearly states he is “waiting for an arrival” (pg. 37), before paragraph two declares he is ‘organising’ and ‘manipulating’ the waiting (pg. 37), turning it into a play which is acted out in various scenes of reaction – “taking it badly”, or a ‘calm’ greeting (pg. 37-38).

The specific words used to tell this story become ‘signs’ of how this scenario will play out. If the character ‘takes [the waiting] badly’, then the reader can assume this to be a sign of a negative outcome of the interaction between the characters when they do meet. Whereas if the character gives a ‘calm’ greeting, perhaps the character is forgiving of the lack of punctuality of the other, which could be taken as a sign of the characters personality, perhaps as a relaxed, understanding individual.

However these signs may not signify the ‘true’ nature of the character, perhaps they give a calm greeting as a sign of manners when truly they feel something else? The signs then signify something else, though the sign is the same action.

The understood terminology is therefore dependent on context and individual understandings, the very implication that Barthes hoped to disprove with his text.

References

Barthes, R 1978, 'Waiting', A Lover's Discourse, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux (trans.), Noonday Press, New York, pp. 37-40.

Chandler, D 2007, Semiotics: The Basics, Routledge, New York.