ABSTRACT
Vital to an understanding of semiological approaches to the meanings of texts is the issue of contexts. As Roland Barthes explains below the problem confronted by Saussure, the Swiss linguist whose work laid the foundations of semiology, is that of ‘the multiform and heterogeneous nature of language’ (and from language we can extrapolate to any codified communication system). In simple terms language is so varied and various that it only lends itself to systematic analysis with great difficulty. Saussure’s significant insight was to recognise two different ways in which language operates:
as a social institution and social values (the langue): this is language as potential and language as a repository of cultural values (attitudes, beliefs, behaviours); and
as an individual act of selection and actualisation (the parole or speech): this is language in action, in performance.
