1. The Author
The author of the “Mythologies”
was born on Nov. 12, 1915 in France. He was the son of naval officer Louis
Barthes, who was killed in a battle during World War I before his son was
one year old. When Barthes was eleven years old his family moved
to Paris. From 1935 to 1939, he studied at
university of Paris. At this stage he suffered from Tuberculoses and left the University. He had several
attacks of Tuberculoses. After his treatment he was able to do something so he
started to teach and write. His first work was Writing Degree Zero (1953).
He wrote many other books like “Michelet” etc. Mythologies, our
concerned work, was published in (1957)
2. Mythologies –
An Introduction
It is a collection of essays
taken from “Les Lettres nouvelles”. It is
divided into two sections
-Mythologies
-Myth Today
First
part titled “Mythologies” contains different essays containing a Myth
Second
part titled “Myth Today” is concerned with the “Myth and Processes of creating
a Myth”.
3. What is Myth?
“A person or thing having only an imaginary or
unverifiable existence”, “an idea or story that is believed by many people but
that is not true”. Merriam Webster
Dictionary
This
is how dictionary defines the word “Myth” but Roland defines this term little
bit different from this and any other dictionary.
•
“Myth is a type of
speech. And myth is a system of communication, that it is a message.” Roland
Barthes
According his definition of myth,
it could be said that it is a type of speech. Like any other communication it
also involves “Signs”. And these signs are used to communicate special type of
message that is Myth. But this message remains hidden to ordinary people.
4. How myths are
developed?
To
understand the Barthes’ theory of Myth creation, that is actually a semantic
theory, we have to discuss the Saussure’s Theory of Meaning, because this
theory is taken as a base by Roland to develop his theory.
a.
Saussure’s Theory of Meaning
Saussure
was Swiss linguist he gave the theory of Meaning.
According
to him “Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas”.
The sign is the basic unit of communication
and it is a mental construct. Saussure accepted that there must be two sides of
meaning that posits a natural relationship between words and things. His labels
for the two sides were signifier and signified, one which the thing which
signifies and the other the thing that is signified. It can also be taken as
the concept and the acoustic image. The signified
is thus always something of an interpretation that is added to the signifier. He calls this relationship a linguistic sign. This linguistic signs
are not abstractions, although they are essentially psychological. Linguistic
signs are, so to speak, tangible and writing can fix them in conventional
images, whereas it would be impossible to capture the acts of speech in all
their details. When we say signified,
this do not exist in sensible form, it is a thought and creation of mental
image that the signifier has signified. Saussure's main concern is linguistic sign does
not link a name and a thing; instead it links a concept and an acoustic
image. That is, language is more than just a list of terms that
correspond to things. An acoustic image is the mental image of a name
that allows a language-user to say the name. However, a linguistic sign
links signifier and signified. A signifier is the sound we say when we say an
object, and the signified is the concept of that said object. The said
object is the sign. In Saussure's theory of linguistics, the signifier is the
sound and the signified is the thought. The linguistic sign is neither
conceptual nor phonic, neither thought nor sound. Rather, it is the whole of
the link that unites sound and idea, signifier and signified. The properties of
the sign are by nature abstract, and are not concrete. He says that the
linguistic principles operate on two principles. The first principle is that
the linguistic sign is arbitrary as there is no interior link between the
concept and the acoustic image. The second is that the signifier being auditory
in nature unfolds in time only. When the signifier and the signified are joined
together they produce a sign which is of positive order, and concrete rather
than abstract.
5.
Barthes Theory Of Myths
Barthes
gave his theory semiology. In his model of semiology the sign becomes signifier.
He calls this 2nd signifier form. Another signified is
added to this form to create a Myth.
6. Examples from
“Mythologies”
Bathes
gave two examples to make us understand his point of view.
First example, he takes from a Latin Grammar Book, is a
sentence.
“It is now time to give one or two
examples of mythical speech. I shall borrow the first
from an observation by Valery. I am a pupil in the second form in a French lycee. I open my Latin grammar, and I read a sentence, borrowed from Aesop or Phaedrus: quia ego nominor leo. I stop and think. There is something ambiguous about this statement: on the
one hand, the words in it do have a simple meaning: because my name is lion. And on the other hand, the sentence is evidently there in order to signify something else to me. Inasmuch as it is
addressed to me, a pupil in the second form, it tells me clearly: I am a grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the agreement of the predicate. I am even forced to realize that the sentence in no way signifies its meaning to me,
that it tries very little to tell me something about the lion and what sort of name he has; its true and fundamental signification is to impose itself on me as the presence of a certain agreement of the predicate. I conclude that I am faced with a particular, greater, semiological system, since it is co extensive with the
language: there is, indeed, a signifier, but this
signifier is itself formed by a sum of signs, it is in itself a first semiological system (my name is lion). Thereafter, the formal pattern is correctly unfolded: there is a signified (I am a grammatical example) and there is a global signification, which is none other than the
correlation of the signifier and the signified; for neither the naming of the lion nor the
grammatical example are given separately.”
2nd Examples is of a Magazine’s title page.
I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or
not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all
her sons, without any colour discrimination,
faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his
so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced
with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French
salute); there is a signified (it is here
a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally,
there is a presence of the signified through
the signifier.
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