Roland Barthes was one of the earliest structuralist or poststructuralist theorists of culture. His work pioneered ideas of structure and signification which have come to underpin cultural studies and critical theory today. Barthes was always an outsider, and articulated a view of the critic as a voice. He was an outsider in three ways: he was gay, he was Protestant in a Catholic culture, and he was an outsider in relation to French academic establishment.

Roland Gérard BarthesNationality : FrenchBorn : 12 November 1915 Died : 25 March 1980Profession : French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician

Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism

Roland Barthes emphasizes the diversity of possible references, and the ambiguity of each signifier. A boundary between denotation and connotation could not be held, and final interpretations are impossible, so every text is plural.

-The signifier is the image used to stand for something else, while the signified is what it stands for. -Society is a construction, preserved by signs of the dominant values within its culture. -The importance of semiology resides in it's functionality.

-Semiology was the close analysis of process of meaning by which the capitalist class who own most of society's wealth and means of production converts its historical class-culture into a universal nature. -According to modern semiology, the benefit of culture resides in the differences of attitudes and groups. Without these differences, choices would be limited.-His feeling was that Occidentalism (the scholarly knowledge of western cultures, languages and people) was like a set of blinders, providing only one tool for understanding namely, rhetoric.

In general, Barthes wanted to create a way for people to deepen their understanding of language, literature, and society. Barthes wanted to make a point that all the signs we see today make up society. The advantage of semiotics in culture lies in the differences between groups.

French national drink-viewed as life giving and refreshing in cold weather -it is associated with all the myths: - of becoming warm - the height of summer - images of shade - all things cool and sparklingDrink of lower social class-partly because it is seen as blood-like as in Holy Communion-points out that very little attention is paid to red wine's harmful effects to health

Example: Red Wine

Barthes’s theory links with the media because the media partly controls the way in which society works. This is because society is made up of signs and the media presents us with additional non stop signs. Overall the media makes these signs for us to interpret and influence what we do in today's life, originally many factors such as the example Barthes gave of ‘Red Wine’ was originated by older times and a different culture (For the French red wine is an average drink in their daily lifestyle, however for people around the world like Britain we see the drink to be fancy). This has a completely different meaning then and now, this is because cultural meaning have changed and the media has recreated this.