Roland Barthes: Decoding Images and Image Rhetoric — Explained

Author: Lesley Lanir

· How do images hold and convey meaning?

· How do we understand them?

· What are they trying to say?

· How do they persuade and influence us?

Roland Barthes deconstructed a Panzani advertising image and extracted the types of messages contained within it in order to illustrate the ‘rhetoric’ of the image. Though advertisements have a deliberate ‘signification’ or meaning generated in order to sell a…