Barthe's semiotic theory

• symbolic codes- an image that has come to represent something else
• symbolic code- cross- christianity
• semantic codes- colours, eg blood with red, danger with red
• proairetic/action codes- signify something is going to happen as a result, eg someone in a film pulling a gun out of a pocket- symbolises they are going to shoot somebody or some conflict is going to happen.
• Barthes thinks that in a lot of products there are also hermeneutic codes/enigma codes, enigma means mystery, any mystery that draws in an audience,
• cultural/referential codes- codes that the audience will only understand if they are a part of a particular culture.
• we make sense of the world through a series of signs that hold meaning
• hermeneutic codes- anything with a meaning, anything posing a question to the audience, 'corpse in a crime drama- who killed them?',
• proairetic codes- action codes- things which suggest something is going to happen,
• referential codes- similar to intertextuality, references to other media products
• myths- a story we tell ourself to make sense of the world around us, a way of understanding the world