From Structuralism To Posts-Tructuralist:on Roland Barthes’ Semiology Of Visual Images

Roland Barthes is one of the most excellent thinker and theorist among the French intelligentsia in the20th century. He has a great influence in the current European and American literature studies and is active in the world’s literature circle. Roland Barthes’ thoughts are very complicated, but in his ever changing studies in many academic areas, he has focused on the road of semiotics, and he is well known as the "The Leader of Semiotics".He extended the research field from written language to literature and culture, especially to the semiotic analysis of visual image; this analysis is of great but has not drawn enough attention. Based on this current situation, this thesis starts from his semiotic interpretation for visual image, combines his commentary and monographs in Barthes’ different developing stages, and tries to find out the source of his thoughts in developing the semiotic interpretation on visual image, in order to make clear the way of his formation of semiotic thought in this field. Roland Barthes’studies are of guiding significance and provide researching tools of methodology in studying current mass culture.In the early period, Roland Barthes used semiotic method from structuralism to study visual images. He proposed that image has its independent structure, and considers the general principle to interpret images is commonly shared with those of language. Applying semiotics method in studying photography, advertisement, painting, movie posters, etc. he proposed such as image stratification theory and the myth of image. After the studies the visual image, he found out that it is the seemingly justifiable naturalness of image that allows the grafting of bourgeois authority to look very beautiful. In this way, the image becomes an effective tool for the ideology manipulation. In the later period of his studies on visual image, Roland Bathes, through the 《La chambre claire》 and other analytical thesis on photography, had a detailed research on the features of visual image under the "post-structuralism contest"; he no longer pursue the stability of image’s symbol structure, and consider that that which the image as a symbol can refer is open and the meaning is infinite. It is critically important to break the symbol’s homogeneity and to activate the signifying function of image.Therefore we can see clearly the path of his transition of image theory from structuralism to post-structuralism. Roland Barthes is not a practitioner of some single theory and method, nor does he simply use the semiotic method to segregate the visual image by different signs mechanically. He enlightened the future generations to have a clear understanding for the mechanism of visual image significance in his later period by combining the semiotics with sociology, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, etc, and deepened our understanding of the generating mechanism of the visual image meanings.