Introducing Barthes

Roland Barthes is best known as a semiologist, a student of the science of signs. This sees human beings primarily as communicating animals, and looks at the way they use language, clothes, gestures, hair styles, visual images, shapes and colour to convey to one another their tastes, their emotions, their ideal self-image and the values of their society. Semiotics sees human beings as communicating animals, and looks at the way they use language, clothes, and visual images to convey to one another their tastes, their emotions, their ideal self-image and the values of their society. Introducing Barthes explains Barthes' application of these ideas to literature and popular culture, and shows why he was a key figure in the structuralist movement.