Page 82 - Decoding Culture

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Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the sig­
nified through the signifier. (Barthes, 1993: 1 6)
1

At this early stage Barthes was examining the process under the
rubric of myth; his example is offered as an instance of 'mythical
speech'. But the essence of his account is that there are two sys­
tems of signification at work here whereby the sign of the primary
system (the photograph of the soldier) becomes the signifier of the
secondary, or mythical, system. In the essays collected in
M y thologies it is this 'second-order semiological system' that forms
Barthes' focus - the metalanguage, as he then calls it, through
which first-order signification comes to carry specific, naturalized
meanings. In 'Myth Today' (Barthes, 1993: 109-159) he begins to
try abstractly to formulate that relationship, and later, in Elements
of Semiology, to extend his formal account in terms of the concepts
of denotation and connotation.
This leads him to untangle two features of second-order sys­
tems that are conflated in his earlier discussions. Imagine that, as
in Barthes' earlier example, we have two systems of signification,
S I and S 2 ' in which the former is an element of the latter. Given
that each is composed of signifiers and signifieds (or, in the terms
Barthes borrows from Hjelmslev, each comprises a plane of
expression and a plane of content) it is necessary to distinguish
two forms of relation between them. S may be the signifier of the
I
second system, its plane of expression, in which case we are con­
fronted with a plane of denotation (S I ) and a plane of connotation
(S ) ' Most commonly, Barthes suggests, this is to be found where
2
natural language forms S and, mounted on it, so to speak, we find
}
a second, wider connotative system (S ) , as is the case with litera­
2
ture. But the same reasoning applies to Barthes' discussions of
photography or to his analysis of the Paris-Match cover, where
one system is taken as the denotative foundation for a broader

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