Assignment of Theories of Language description:

Linguistic Philosopher: Ronald Barthes

Roll Number: 19S-MS-ENGL-17

Assigned by: Syed Waqar Ali Shah Bukhari

Submitted by: Rukhsana Balal

English Language Development Centre(ELDC)

Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan.

 CONTENTS:

1. Introduction
2.
3. Conclusion
4. Reference
 LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHER: RONALD BARTHES

Semiotics is the study of signs and meanings and its significance. There were various semiotician
who studied sign, i.e Saussure, Umberto Eco, Louis Hjelmslev, Charles Sanders Peirce and Ronald
Barthes. Each had studied sign differently. This paper discusses the work of Ronald Bathes on
semiotics. He studies significance of sign in terms of social and cultural life.

Roland Barthes was born at Cherbourg in 1915. His mother brought him up after his father’s
death. He spent his childhood at Bayonne in south-west France. For his schooling he went to Paris.
From 1934 to 1947 he suffered in tuberculosis disease. He taught in Rumania, Egypt and the
Collège de France in 1977. He died in 1980.

Roland Barthes had great diversity in his work. It covers semiotic theory, critical literary essays,
the presentation of Jules Michelet’s historical writing in terms of its obsessions, a psycho
biographical study of Racine, which infuriated various sections of the French literary
establishment, as well as the more ‘personalised’ works on the pleasure of the text, love, and
photography.