You are here

Barthes goes further

15 January, 2016 - 09:14

Barthes was able to expand upon the work of these scholars. His classified concepts, such as Language and Speech, Signified and Signifier, Syntagm and System, Denotation and Connotation (Barthes, 1968, trans. Cape, J., p. 12) expanded on Saussure's work. For example, he added the concept of "the motivated" as the middle concept between "the icon" as only one functional meaning and "the arbitrary" as infinite possible meanings. The motivated is carefully defined by accepted conventions; national flags or uniforms are begin to merge into the motivated when they give rise to the wearing of civilian clothes that have a complex but nevertheless very clear set of associations in the particular society in which they have grown up. 1

Also, while Lévi-Strauss sought for the universality throughout all different kinds of myths, Barthes emphasized on the potential of difference as a role of language, especially in his later thought. Barthes thus becomes a link between structuralism and post-structuralism.