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made between ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. At this level of the message,
however, the analytic distinction is important. Distinguishing two levels of
analysis, or two levels of operation in the functioning of codes, does not require
us to find these distinctions empirically observable in any concrete instance,
since each instance will always be the product of the ‘over-determination’ of
both levels of operation. Nevertheless, ‘we believe that the method requires an
operational distinction between two levels of organization of the sign’. From this
point of view, a distinction can be made between those aspects of a sign where
the meaning, produced through the operation of a code, has been fixed in
conventional usage and is widely and apparently ‘naturally’ employed within a
language community, and more fluid and open-ended significations which,
through the operation of alternative codes, can be more fully exploited for their
ideological signifying value. In this sense ‘denotation’ is nothing more than a
useful rule for distinguishing, in any particular instance or operation, those
connotations which have become naturalized and those which, not being so
fixed, provide the opportunity for more extensive ideological re-presentations.
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Barthes himself, in S/Z, expands his concept of denotation from the
definitions he offered in Elements of Semiology, and usefully clarifies it:
Denotation is not the first sense, but it pretends to be [our italics]. Under this
illusion, in the end, it is nothing but the last of connotation (where the
reading is at the same time grounded and enclosed), the superior myth,
thanks to which the text pretends to return to the nature of language…. We
must keep denotation, old vigilant deity, crafty, theatrical, appointed to
represent the collective innocence of language.

Semiologists contest the hierarchy of denotation and connotation, saying that any
language, with its dictionary and syntax, is a system just like all others and that
therefore there is no reason for reserving denotation as a privileged first level,
neutral in itself, which originates all the others. Barthes, however, justifies his
adoption of the distinction in an argument based primarily on Hjelmslev, a fact
which demonstrates his loyalty to linguistics, at least as far as the Elements
period was concerned.
The destruction by semiologists of the connotation/denotation distinction in its
traditional linguistic sense is made through the identification of denotation with
connotation and the fact that ideological meanings are present in both processes.
Baudrillard, in Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, also does this;
though he distinguishes the different degree of ideological interference in each
instance, he refuses the general distinction as it is usually used: ‘Denotation is
totally supported by the myth of ‘objectivity’ (whether concerning the linguistic
sign, the analogous photographic or iconic sign, etc.), the direct adequacy of a
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signifier and a precise reality.’ And further on: