![]() ![]() ![]() Myth is a second-order semiotic system. It takes an already constituted sign and turns it into a signifier.īarthes’s example is a magazine cover which shows a black soldier saluting the French flag. At the level of first-order language, this picture is a signifier (an image) which denotes an event (a soldier saluting a flag). But at the second-order mythological level, it signifies something else: the idea of France as a great multi-ethnic empire, the combination of Frenchness and militariness. The main purpose of his work in ‘Mythologies’ is to dissect the functioning of certain insidious myths. He is discussing the type of discourse which is particularly typical of right-wing populism and of the tabloid press. Barthes’s work on myths prefigures discourse-analysis in media studies. Many of the myths he studies come from the fields of politics and journalism. The most explicitly political aspect of Barthes’s work is his ‘mythology’, or analysis of myths. ![]()
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