Poststructuralism and The Rhetoric of an Image.

Poststructuralism

The course notes tell us that poststructuralism is often linked with postmodernism.  We are told that a statement such as "The cat sat on the mat" is understood because there is an underlying structure to the English language, which we all subscribe to; other languages have their own structure. Roger Jones on the philosopher.org.uk website says that by the mid 20th century a number of structural theories of our existence were prevalent.  He goes on to say that Ferdinand de Suassure argued that meaning was to be found in the structure of language.  Marxists liked structuralism as the truth about human existence could be explained by analysing economic structures. (Jones, 2015)

The course notes tell us that Saussure coined the term 'sign' which might be a written or spoken word or a photograph or a pictogram.  According to Saussure:

·         A sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified.

·         The signifier is the picture or the word

·         The signified is what the signifier implies or connotes.  (Suggests seems a better word to me; I had difficulty getting my head around the difference between denotes and connotes. The dictionary definitions are: denote - stand for or sign for; connote - imply or suggest)  The signified is not the thing but the idea of the thing.

Jones tells us that the most important proponent of poststructuralism in the 1960s was French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. (Jones, 2015)

Poststructuralism argues that understanding the role of the signified and signifier in a sign is not because it was intrinsic within the sign (structuralism) but because it was learned or intertextual.  Poststructuralism also argued that a sign could mean different things to different people at different times.  In the course notes I find that the word 'Kite' is a good example of this.

The Rhetoric of the Image: Roland Barthes

In this essay Barthes explains how to read the messages that images contain by using the Panzani advertising image that was used in France to advertise an Italian product.  Interestingly the advertisement is actually in Italian.  The beauty of advertisements is that they need to get their message over very quickly in order to be able to convince people to buy the product.  Barthes feels that adverts are a good means of looking at ideologies.  He examines the relationship between the signifier and signified in a sign (the Panzani advert) by looking at them in terms of denotation (stand for) and connotation (suggestion).  According to Barthes connotation is a higher level skill and he suggests that people of the same culture (in this case France) will infer the same idea.  Barthes also looks at the text in the advert and discusses its function.  He suggests there are two: anchorage and relay.  Anchorage directs the viewer through the signifieds and the relay further helps by telling a story as in a comic strip.

Jones, R. (2015) Poststructuralism [online] Available from: http://www.philosopher.org.uk/poststr.htm [Accessed 6 May 2015]