Narrative Codes: Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes Narrative Codes

Roland Barthes French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician.

In “Introduction to Structural Analysis of Narrative” (1977), Roland Barthes outlined five narrative codes that define the internal logic of the narrative. These codes rely on the audience as ‘readers’ of the text suggesting that audience play an active role in recreating the narrative.

Similar to Todorov’s theory, where audience’s experience of the narrative involves anticipating and expecting a resolution to a problem or ‘disruption’, Barthes’ codes encourage the audience to seek answers to clues and make them anticipate outcomes. The five codes are as follows:

Hermeneutic or enigma code: narratives set up puzzles to be solved, e.g. ‘What did the letter say”, what is in the briefcase’, these enigmas delay the ending of the narrative and maintain audience interest and anticipation. In most cases we will find out the answer to these enigmas and this will contribute to our enjoyment of the overall resolution.

Proairetic or action code: This code also relates to progression in the narrative and involves the codes of behaviour or actions that lead us to expect certain consequences, based on our experiences of other film narratives. For example, when a Cowboy enters a saloon and takes his gun from its holster, this behaviour leads us to expect certain consequences that someone will be shot.

Semic or semantic code: This code involves the connotative meaning of characters, objects or settings that we learn to ‘read’ through our experience of narratives. For example, the colour is often used to suggest danger or passion; therefore a red dress worn by a female is likely to suggest her sexuality or power.

Symbolic code: This code relates to symbolic features of a text that signify oppositions and antitheses that exist in a narrative, such as good/evil, light/dark, civilised/savage (binary opposites).

Cultural, or referential code: this code refers to outside the text and the knowledge that we commonly share and bring to the text and the knowledge that we commonly share and bring to the text to understand its meaning.