Sunday, 27 November 2011

Roland Barthes signs and signifiers

During music videos there are many signs and signifiers that both advertise the artist and send out meanings to the audience. These are either private or shared.
There are two layers of messages that can be sent through visual images, Linguistic message and the literal image. Each of these also has separate sections that build up a modern music video.

Roland Barthes deals with the relationship between the linguistic and the semiological sign. He notes several points of difference between the two:

1) Whereas the elaboration of language systems is brought about as the result of the "speaking mass”, that of semiological systems is more usually associated with a group who fabricate the language.
2) In semiological systems parole or "speech" is poor. Barthes gives the example of cars. The range of choice of difference of cars is very restricted by comparison to those offered by speech. Semiological signs are second order signs; they rely for much of their meaning on the linguistic signs within which they are framed.

Posted by Dominic

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