Mythologies by Roland Barthes

The whole text is the short summary of Roland Barthes' "Mythologies" and "Myth Today".
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1. “Mythologies”
By
Roland Barthes


Submitted By: Abdul Farooq Khan
Submitted To: Madam Aniqa Afzal



DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

2. Department of English Language and Literature, MUL



Contents



1. The Author
2. Mythologies – An Introduction
3. What is Myth?
4. How myths are developed?
4.1. Saussure’s Model of Meaning
4.2. Barthes Theory Of Myths
5. Examples from “Mythologies”

3. Department of English Language and Literature, MUL


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

4. Department of English Language and Literature, MUL


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 a Swiss linguist and semiotican. 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

5. Department of English Language and Literature, MUL


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 2
nd
signifier form. Another signified is added to this form to create a Myth.

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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.”

2
nd
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.

7. Department of English Language and Literature, MUL