Roland Barthes's Three Levels of Signification

Semiotics and Semiotic analysis. Overall message of an image and how this image serves ideologies in society. Identifying ideological foundations of an image

Barthes’s contribution

Overall message of an image and how this message serves ideologies in society (ideological foundations)

Denotation

Level 1: direct, literal common-sense meaning (icons)

Connotation & myth

Level 2: socio-cultural and personal meanings attached to denotative signs

Ideology

Level 3: dominant worldview; normative ideals, beliefs & values held by a group; making sense of our political & social worlds (capitalism)

Stereotypes

overgeneralised & distorted view; oversimplified

Myth

socio-cultural truth with underlying ideological meaning; an attempt to make its view of reality natural - naturalising the dominant ideology