On Fridays lesson with Emily we were introduced to a theorist
Roland Barthes who poses questions to the audience without them realising it and his theory of
five enigma codes.
Barthes says that all narratives share structural features that are brought together in different ways. Although there are differences between individual narratives, they all have a limited number of organisational structures that affect our reading of texts - this is called 'narrative/ enigma codes'.
Barthes' enigma codes is a theory that suggests a text portrays a mystery to draw an audience in, pose questions and as such, become intrigued in the piece. Whether that be through television, film, a poster etc...
An example of this would be, a murder mystery will often not reveal the identity of the murderer until the end of the story (a film example of this would be se7en) which poses a question 'who is the murderer.'
Narrative/ enigma codes
Barthes theory of the five codes is a way of grouping signifiers according to the role they play in the text.
These are categorised as:
The Hermeneutic Code - the voice of truth -
This is the way the story avoids telling the truth or revealing all the facts, in order to drop clues in through out to help create mystery.
The Proairetic Code - the voice of empirics -
This is the way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next.
The Semantic Code - the voice of the persons -
The semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, offer additional meaning by way of connotation which that story suggests.
The Symbiotic Code - the voice of the symbol -
This is very similar to the semantic code, but acts at a wider level, organised semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.
The Cultural Code - the voice of knowledge -
This looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.
