A CRITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

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A CRITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
the political, social and economic
dimensions of myth
Mike Berrell
Occasional Paper | No. 1, 2019 | WADEmatheson Singapore | www.wadematheson.com

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CONTENT
1. Problems and Frameworks in the Textual Analysis of Myth 2
2. Semiotics and Barthes’ Analysis of Myth 8
3. On Discourse 11
4. Finding Meaning in Myth 14
5. The Structure of an Afterthought 16
6. Television as a Cultural Form 25
7. Myth in Television Satire 27
8. Minding Class Consciousness 33
9. Coda: Limits to Discourse Analysis 38
Appendix A 40
References 41

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1. PROBLEMS AND FRAMEWORKS FOR THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MYTH
A NOTE TO THE READER
This paper appears as a matter of record. Its origin resides in a master’s research project in textual
analysis undertaken in the heady days of the late 1980s, when post-structuralism, post-modernism and
various shades of Marxism vied for prominence among the diverse academic tribes that populated Mass
Media and Communication Studies departments in many Western universities. At the time, academics
often applied critical and postmodern frameworks to the analysis of texts. However, in the late 1990s, a
book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont caused many of those academics to stop dead in their tracks.
According to the publicity blurb on the back cover of their book, Intellectual Impostures, Postmodern
philosophers’ abuse of science (1999), the authors believed that the writings of the prominent French
postmodernists revealed the “sack loads of ordure (emanating) from the postmodern stable”. These
writings also exposed the “ignorance, pomposity and pseudo-science”, which characterized the thinking
of many Left intellectuals, especially those in France. According to the authors, the products of this group
amounted to gibberish.
The original research reported below discussed the ideas of some people savagely criticized in
Intellectual Impostures as a springboard to discussing the political, economic and social dimensions of
myth. I hope the excesses of the postmodern culprits named in Intellectual Impostures do not deter the
reader from finding something useful in the approach to textual analysis described below.
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The significant role of books, novels, art works, architecture and other texts1 in disseminating noteworthy
ideas about the nature of society in historical and contemporary times is widely recognized (Bennett et
al., 2009; Dressler & Robbins, 1975; Hudson, 2015; Hills, 1980; Woods, 2001). The posters of Henri
Toulouse-Lautrec depicting the Moulin Rouge, the wonderful characters in Charles Dickens’ novels, the
people depicted in Rembrandt’s miss-named Night Watch and the scenes painted on the Greek vases of
antiquity all revealed something fundamental about the society of their time. Hieronymus Bosch’s
painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted between 1490 and 1510, is so full of symbolism that
art historians today still argue about its meaning. However, many seemingly mundane texts subtly
penetrate our consciousness and shape our thoughts — for example, in everyday conversation we might
argue about the merits of fascist-like architecture, the inappropriateness of the lowbrow humour in The
Benny Hill Show or the goings-on of the servants (‘downstairs’) and the family (the masters, ‘upstairs’),
the characters who populated the television series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975). The latter series
told us something about the nature of social class in England between the years 1903 and 1930 and the
waning of the power of British aristocrats. In a similar vein, the paintings of Norman Rockwell told
American audiences something about the ideals bracing their society and culture.
In texts of this type, the notion of social class and/or stratified social structures come through in the
narrative. Dress and colour codes, accoutrements, scenes, symbols, gestures and juxtaposition of the main
protagonists also combine to supply clues to the identification of the social class of the characters
portrayed. The dignity of labour or the nobility of the master might also emanate from a text. Ideas about
the nature, purpose and place of social classes in society flow from a range of historical and contemporary
narratives. As a topic of investigation, political opposites like Karl Marx and Aristotle wrote about the
social classes of their time. Moreover, most historians have taken time to record the fate of privileged
and under privileged groups and/or social classes throughout history (Santos, 1970).
Despite some people believing the idea of social class is irrelevant in modern times, Cole (2018)
succinctly argues for a contrary view. The concept of social class matters because it is still important for
contemporary society and sociological analysis for several reasons, irrespective of the category used to
sort people into classes (for example, economic, socio-economic, educational achievement, employment
type and so forth). Class matters because:
The fact that it exists reflects unequal access to rights, resources, and power in society ... it has a
strong effect on the access an individual has to education, the quality of that education, and how far
a level they can reach. It also affects who one knows socially, and the extent to which those people
1 The term ‘text’ includes not only literary works but also television shows, cultural artefacts and indeed, any phenomenon that
has a meaning or any message ‘read’ and understood by people.

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can provide advantageous economic and employment opportunities, political participation and
power, and even health and life expectancy, among many other things.
Throughout history, information that reinforces the dominant ways of thinking about politics, economics
and society of the time surface in a variety of textual narratives - in stories, legends and artefacts. Literary
texts also supply a quasi-historical record of the society that produced them although these records differ
depending on authorship. The adage ‘winners write history’ rings true here.
There are many forms of literature (novels, poetry, short stories) and art (drawing, painting, sculpture,
printmaking, designs, photography and so forth) and styles within these forms are numerous (realism in
literature to surrealism in art). Given the multiplicity of and complexities within these forms and styles,
the project opted to analyse one type of textual narrative. The method of textual analysis below owes a
strong allegiance to Roland Barthes’ (1973) semiotic method of textual analysis of a narrative form he
called ‘myth’.
Barthes employs the term to describe the process by which the denoted or literal meanings of signs
fall away and replaced with messages about the legitimacy of certain ideas – particularly those
concerning political, economic, social and/or cultural values. This sleight of hand mediates parochial
representations of society as being universal. Thus, myth conveys the way things are and the natural
order of things. In contemporary Western society, this order is often based on the implicit acceptance of
free-enterprise capitalism as the most efficient mode of economic production and various shades of
democracy as the best political option.
1.2 APPROCH TO TEXTUAL ANALYIS
To help show the effects of myth on shaping ideas about politics, economics and society, the project
draws from a variety of sources. Critical Theory advanced by members of the Frankfurt School2 helps
build understandings about the nexus between power relations and a society’s institutions. The humanist
writings of Karl Marx3 suggest how social, economic, personal and cultural traits contribute to the
making of a social class. The work of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss on the structural study of myths
and legends among indigenous societies plus a liberal interpretation of Jacques Lacan’s triadic (mental)
structure of the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real4 also brace the analytic framework. A nod to the
psychoanalytic perspectives of Sigmund Freud5 also augments the discussion. In addition, the ideas of
Michel Foucault help unravel the multifaceted concept of discourse.
However, a cautionary note concerning contributions made by thinkers on the Left. Sebastiano
Timpanaro (1980) warns that many such contributions prevent the substantive ideas and theories of Karl
Marx from rising to the surface. In a similar vein, the work of Sigmund Freud is also problematic.
Therefore, this paper refers to original works when citing these thinkers. The sociologist George Ritzer’s
(1975) suggestion that a researcher’s worldview or paradigm orientation will shape (and sometime skew)
the hypotheses or conjectures they develop is also another red flag. The law of the instrument proposes
that an overreliance on a single research approach creates a cognitive bias. As Maslow (1966) suggests,
“if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as a nail”. With the above advice in
mind, the project uses mixed methods to investigate how myth mediates parochial ideas as universal, for
what purpose and to whose benefit.
The paper has three sections; the first deals with the problematic nature of culture, myth and texts. In
second section, Barthes’ concept of myth as a semiotic structure provides the basis for analysing two
very different types of texts — the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic and three modern television comedy
programs. The final section reveals how covert and/or overt discourses in these texts paint a picture of
social class and the order of things for their respective audiences.
2 Political and social theorists at the University of Frankfurt (referred to as the ‘Frankfurt School’) developed this Critical Theory
approach from the ideas of Karl Marx (Held, 1980). The works of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Jürgen
Habermas and Herbert Marcuse are prominent in and characteristic of the Frankfurt School’s approach.
3 Works by and about Marl Marx and his collaborator Fredrich Engels proliferate the academic literature. Consequently, the
same material may have different translators, editors and/or publications dates. This paper refers where possible to works by
Marx and/or Engels. According to Wikipedia, “the Marx/Engels Collected Works is the largest collection of translations into
English of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This publication holds all the works published by Marx and Engels in
their lifetimes including unpublished manuscripts and letters (although it is not their complete output). The Collected Works,
translated by Richard Dixon and others, consists of 50 volumes published between 1975 and 2005 by Progress Publishers in
collaboration with Lawrence and Wishart and International Publishers” (see Marx, K. & Engels, F. [2010], Collected Works, 50
Volumes, London, Lawrence & Wishart).
4 Lacan is not without his critics; in The Freudian Left, Timpanaro (1976) reviewed Lacan’s work and was unconvinced by his
theories and arguments.
5 see Freud, S. (1976). Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Standard edition, 1-24), New York: Norton.

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1.3 CRITICAL THEORY, CULTURE AND MYTH
Unravelling the concept of culture is a challenging task. For example, Raymond Williams (1977) asserts
that the concept expresses all the agreements, contradictions and diversity contained with the social
experiences that impel a person’s understanding of the term. Williams’ stance suggests that the processes
and objects used by people to describe the concept subverts the interpretive process. Critical Theory6
offers a foundation for understanding this subversive mechanism by highlighting how ideology shapes a
person’s worldview and clouds any objective assessment of the human condition.
In particular, the work of a second-generation member of the Frankfurt School, Jurgen Habermas,
helps in understanding the reach of ideology in mythic texts. Habermas (1971) discerns three generic
types of knowledge that affect human cognition. One type of knowledge Habermas defined as “empirical-
analytical” in nature. Causal relationships that help people understand the physical world characterize
knowledge of this type. From within this orientation, technical or nominal interests hold sway. For
Habermas, a dominant theme of knowledge in this technical realm is concerned with how people go
about controlling, managing, producing and reproducing their material and intellectual worlds.
Habermas also named a second type of knowledge as “hermeneutic-historical” in substance with its
ensuing interest practical in nature. Following the road opened by the German sociologist and political
economist Max Weber, interpretive understandings within various social contexts characterized this type
of knowledge rooted in practice. However, the ability of people to reflect critically on their situation and
the coercive and restrictive forces acting on social development is characteristic of another and arguably
more important type of knowledge. Here, the ensuing interest is social “emancipation” within the broad
tradition of democratic socialism.
Within a Critical Theory perspective, Herbert Marcuse (1968) describes two ways that people
conceptualize culture. He implies that culture is a semiotic system, represented by a surface structure and
a deep structure, suggesting that culture:
Expresses or signifies the totality of social life in a given situation, insofar as both areas of ideational
reproduction … and of material reproduction form a historical distinguishable and comprehensible
unity – and this stands in contrast to constructions of culture by lifting it out of its historical context,
a (false) collective noun attributing (false) universality.
Marcuse’s description exemplifies a watershed moment in thinking about culture in the West. Until the
eighteenth century, the terms culture and civilization were closely associated — as a collective noun,
culture described the fundamental institutions and processes that braced English society (Williams,
1977). Thinking of this type seems to approximate Marcuse’s concept of culture as a signifier of
something universal. However, metaphysical assumptions often drive universal understandings.
Claude Levi-Strauss’ (1979) structural approach in the discipline of anthropology also marks a
defining moment in the field, where culture, myth and legend merge as symbolic functions7. These
independent notions became interdependent elements in the cultural mix. However, Keller (1982)
highlights two distinctions concerning myth that deserve attention. The first distinction is the type of
myth that seeks to resolve certain social contradictions — it normally follows the style of myth as a
narrative. In the second type, images and signs ‘coalesce into a set of pure images without history or
contradiction’.
In the context of type 1, Levi-Strauss (1979) plots a path from one’s awareness of oppositions and
contradictions toward a resolution of that conflict. This interpretation places any mythic ‘text’ as a
diachronic representation (succession through time) of a set of synchronic (timeless) oppositions8.
Although Andre Haudricourt and Georges Granai (1955) flagged Levi-Strauss’ trailblazing and bold
developments in anthropology as akin to a Copernican Revolution, his work nevertheless faced criticism.
One thorny aspect of Levi-Strauss’ views required his adherents to accept these timeless oppositions as
concomitant to something fundamental about the structure of human cognition (Levi-Strauss, 1967).
Nevertheless, Levi-Strauss offers compelling reasons why we should pay close attention to the insights
he offered concerning myth (1979). Importantly, Levi-Strauss’ interpretation of the role myth plays in
society is based on human cognition. As shared communication, myth is a significant form of symbolic
exchange. The second type of distinction, aligned to Barthes’ description of myth, is sympathetic to the
6 The interpretation below of Critical Theory is taken directly from Berrell (2013) and the ‘Critical Theory’ entry in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory.
7 See, for example, Badcock (1975) and Leach (1967, 1976, 1982).
8 cf. comments on the ‘Oedipus Myth’ in Hawkes, 1977; Kronenfeld & Decker, 1979, pp. 524-27; for diachronic and synchronic
analysis, see Wilden, 1980, pp. 7-17

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proposition that the mass media’s role in society is manipulative9. This view has gathered strength since
the early 1900s (Ewen, 1976). The significant and disruptive role of social media in today’s world,
including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, magnify this opinion.
In a Critical Theory mindset, Acosta (1979) highlights the need for methods of historical analysis that
reveal the nexus between the human context of communication and its socio-political motivations.
Without this shift, communication per se becomes a technological function. For Acosta, social class and
culture are always interdependent elements of any historical discourse. In the case of the Critical
Theorists, valid interpretations find their expression within Marx’s humanist paradigm.
Barthes’ approach also has its critics. For example, the immediate perceived myth (or culture) might
not necessarily bear any resemblance to the actual condition that give rise to these social beliefs.
Nevertheless, like all forms of communication, myth and culture both require a signification system as
the a priori condition of their existence (Eco, 1977). Paul Willis (1977) adds to the debate, suggesting
that most facets of culture are quite inconsistent in a field of study where distinctions and contradictions
abound. Therefore, definitions based on preconceived intrinsic value are on shaky ground. More fruitful
understandings of the concept are likely to appear by pinpointing the role and efficacy of myth within a
specific social structure.
One obvious role of culture is to communicate; thus, in From the Sociology of Symbols to the
Sociology of Signs, Ino Rossi (1983) constructs culture as a set of rules for the dissemination of signs.
But what are the consequences of culture communicating the dynamics of social interaction at both deep
and surface levels simultaneously? Anthropologist Edmund Leach (1976) infers this dual function in
Culture and Communication, suggesting that the intricate and interwoven events that make up the fabric
of culture communicate information to those who take part in the rituals of social life. Yet, subjective
readings of social settings claim no special privileges for the social anthropologist. Sass (1986) argues
that the idea of culture might only be a moral injunction that enables field workers to search for
unanticipated connections between what are unrelated events.
As myth is a component of the dynamic construct of culture, what myth communicates must be
something beyond a static mediation of extant knowledge. Therefore, myth must contain traces of the
accumulated history of a society and/or discrete social groups to the extent that myth houses part of a
society’s DNA. In this light, the notion of history is certainly problematic and often distorted by the
predilections of those defining or interpreting an event. Engaging in historical analysis is, therefore,
always a highly interpretive enterprise10. For example, which history should we interrogate when
analyzing myth?
The historian Michel Foucault (1970) was mindful of the traps set for subjective interpreters. He was
acutely concerned with the determinants and potential of the objective truths contained in his own work.
As Racevisks (1983) avows, the cultural bias inherent in all textual interpretations makes Foucault’s own
discourses on history evocative but not necessarily conclusive. While history and culture both issue
knowledge about the past, the present and a desirable future, Williams (1977) thought that the work of
Karl Marx offers a reasonable history from which to explain social relations. He suggests that any
authentic analysis of history requires the historian to be aware of the complex interrelations between
movements and tendencies both within and beyond a specific dominance. In this context, it should be
possible to separate out knowledge and practices that reflect and reinforce dominant ways of knowing
and doing.
1.4 MARX AND SOCIAL CLASS
Many contemporary sociologists find issues with Marx’s method and his worldview, describing his ideas
as outmoded and remote from the kind of knowledge required to investigate social phenomena in the
modern world. Nevertheless, some fundamental ideas impelling Marx's worldview and generic approach
to problem-solving still hold relevance in a contrary world (Soares, 1968). A weighty body of literature
describes and analyses Marx’s worldview, his ideas about social class and the defining features of
capitalism as an economic system11.
9 US President Thomas Jefferson one said of the mass media of his day: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a
newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle”.
10 See, for example, Leech (1963), where he suggests that authors can place emphasis on one aspect of society, which results in
the insufficient recognition of other aspects.
11 While Marx recognized capitalism as an economic system that offered humankind great possibilities, he simultaneously the
system was grossly unfair. For Marx, two outcomes characterized capitalism: (i) the production of goods as commodities and (ii)
the pre-eminence of exchange values rather than use-values as determinants of the worth of these goods and services. In a class-
bound capitalist system, the role of ideology masks the effects of two other features of capitalism - surplus value and private
property in production (cf. Althusser & Balibar, 1979; Fine, 1984; Marx and Engels, 2010; Rosdolsky, 1980).

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Marx deduced his theory of class from his opinion that two polar classes existed in a capitalist society.
In The Communist Manifesto, he describes these two great classes standing in opposition. One class
produces surplus value directly or indirectly; the other class exploits or appropriates this surplus for its
own ends (cf. Suchting, 1983). Thus, class is a relationship — of the individual to the dominant mode of
economic production. This primary relationship fosters further relationships. For example, Hall (1967)
notes that people differ according to attributes including age, income, occupation, ethnicity and culture.
However, each segment of the population holds some common assumptions about the social structure in
which they live.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx includes socio-economic, cultural and ethnic
traits as other factors contributing to developing a concept of social class. Marx’s theoretical writings on
class hold enough information to show several distinct social classes in contemporary capitalist society.
Marx defines the polar classes as the proletariat (or working class) and the bourgeoise. The former is the
class traditionally engaged directly in the production of commodities; the latter, the group who exercise
control over the means of economic production. All other classes, however defined or characterized are
non-polar classes. Yet, Marx and Engels also noted the influence of immigration that created various
sub-cultures within the working class. In the United States of the 1870s, Engels spoke about two groups
of American workers, the "native” and the “foreign born”, with the latter group sub-dividing itself
according to ethnic and cultural attributes (Lozovsky, 1935).
The lumpenproletariat, according to Marx, consisted of ‘the refuse of all classes’, vagabonds’ and
‘jailbirds who form a free-floating mass’ vulnerable to reactionary ideas (Bottomore et al., 1983). The
new bourgeoise consist of those people linked by long-term interests aligned to the bourgeoise and
therefore, the maintenance of the political system. The petit-bourgeoise is a class who consist of small
independent producers and genuine artisans, theatrical people, professional artists and sports people
(Debray, 1981; Poulantzas, 1978; Walker, 1979).
Finally, there are a group Nicolaus (1967) calls the surplus class. Serge Mallet (1975) calls a similar
group the “new working class”. As a logical extension of ideas in both Theories of Surplus Value and
Grundrisse, Marx’s surplus class include people employed in the new industries and services, which
arose to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding economic base of capitalism and the increasing
application of new technologies to production and communication. This wide-ranging group includes
occupations like accountants, line managers, technicians, computer programmers, teachers, banks and
finance people, marketers, salespeople, supervisors, clerical assistants and so forth (cf. Bell, 1976b;
Dahrendorf, 1959). Giddens (1973), Ossowski (1963) and Wright (1978, 1979) discuss other
interpretations of social class, also referred to below in showing how myth mediates ideas about social
class.
1.5 JACQUES LACAN, LANGUAGE AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PARADIGM
The tenets of Critical Theory support the view that some texts in any historical period will reflect the
views of the dominant social and political groups. This point of view also received attention in the field
of psychoanalysis (Felman, 1982; Holland, 1982). Concerning textual analysis, psychoanalytic
frameworks also reveal both overt and covert meanings in a variety of texts. In this context, although
Jacques Lacan came under considerable fire from the attack on his work launched by Sokal and Bricmont
(1999)12, one of his foundational ideas offer a unique anchor point in the textual analysis of myth.
Lacan arbitrarily divides mental processes in three types of relations: The Symbolic, The Imaginary
and The Real. Although Lacan’s views are frustrating because his style is inductive, his arguments
circular and often oblique (Wilden 1980), Malcolm Bowie (1979) interprets Symbolic relations as the
dominant signifiers among the Lacan’s triadic structure. The Symbolic is the effect of language
acquisition and its processes give a person the ability to differentiate between objects. These relations
between objects are relationships of similarities and differences between logical types (Wilden, 1980).
The Symbolic organizes the “specularity” of the Imaginary. The Imaginary is the relation of false
identification – a mode of thinking based on opposition and identification. This is a storeroom for
impressions of an external world, not yet experienced directly.
The Real is a highly ambiguous concept at best and consists of things that are: as such, these things
remain on the periphery of human experience. This is the realm of the non-discursive and any experiences
of the Real fail to encroach directly upon the signifying chain. According to Bowie (1979), the Real is
all that is “extrinsic to the procession of signifiers”. Lacan writes little about the Real, although Fredric
Jameson (1991) interprets the concept as mostly meaning “history”. In other words, The Real incudes
12 In their assessment, Lacan’s abuse of mathematics and mathematical terms are extensive – as such, much of his work is “pure
verbiage” and “nonsense”.

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phenomena or a personal relationship that goes on enriching our Real knowledge. The Real does not stop
at an either/or estimation of a fact in either the Imaginary or the universality of the Symbolic.
A precis of Bowie’s (1979) view about Imaginary and Symbolic relationships hits home: he proposes
that while “the Imaginary grows from a child’s experience of his ‘specular ego’, the process extends far
into adulthood experience of others and of the external world”; when false identifications occur between
or among phenomena, “there the Imaginary holds sway”. Although the two orders stand opposed, “the
Symbolic encroaches upon the Imaginary, organizes it, and gives it direction; the false fixities of the
Imaginary are exposed and coerced into movement, by the signifying chain”. Because the Real is
extrinsic to the signifying chain, an individual’s beliefs of the world remain confined to representations
of relationships between phenomena forged in the Imaginary. If myth is also an imaginary representation,
then the signs of myth reflect some of the very real conditions that impel a person’s worldview.
Anthony Wilden (1980) shows correlations between the theories of Marx’s analysis of capitalist
society and Freud’s psychoanalysis. He also asks his readers to consider a description of the capitalist as
a mode of production where symbolic relations between people morph into imaginary relations between
commodities and things (cf. Althusser, 1975). Here, similarities in the approaches of Freud and Marx are
beginning to appear. While critical assessment of Lacan’s mode of expression and his psychoanalysis
reveals difficulties in his work, a liberal application of his mental triad as a heuristic framework opens
his ideas about the Imaginary to materialistic interpretations.

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2. SEMIOTICS AND BARTHES’ ANALYSIS OF MYTH
2.1 DEEP MEANING IN MYTH
Barthes (1973) three ordered semiotic framework for the analysis of myth leaves no part of a textual
discourse metaphysically privileged. The first two orders of the framework use metalanguage to describe
myth as a ‘second order semiotic system’. The signs of myth at the third order of signification uncover
the ideologies embedded within a text. Analysis at this level links these axial principles to political,
economic or social values, which support a social structure. This identification allows for comparisons
with the more humanist views of Marx on social class.
Axial principles are those deep values that shape and structure a society. However, culture works at
embedded levels and most people are blissfully unaware of its influence on either their own behaviour
or the behaviour of others (Adler, 1997; Triandis, 1983). Akin to an “invisible jet stream”, culture
generally registers as unconscious motivation by tapping into deeper understandings about what is or
what should be (Hall, 1976). These arrangement of ideas and things not only reflect but also lay bare the
general principles, beliefs and values by which a culture organizes and interprets itself and its
environment (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; cf. Levi-Strauss, 1979).
Barthes also challenges a prevailing view of language derived from the work of Ferdinand de
Saussure (1974)13. He opts instead for a method of analysis that includes ideology as part of the function
of language. Ino Rossi quotes from Barthes’ S/Z (1975) to clarify his rationale for challenging Saussure’s
semiotic approach — Barthes suggests that ‘reducing language to its sentence structure and its lexical
and syntactical components assures the closure of Western discourse’. For Barthes, myth as a form of
symbolic communication is one road leading to a society’s deep structure. He suggests that any number
of texts including media reports, television shows, art works, advertising blurbs, consumer good and
architecture all have mythic elements. Barthes perceives myth as akin to Émile Durkheim’s notion of a
“collective representation”. Therefore, myth moves beyond the exclusivity of authorial intention and
finds added meaning is a broader range of political, economic and/or social discourses.
In a political setting, Barthes suggests that myth’s function is akin the role Marx ascribed to ideology
in capitalist society. For Barthes, myth appears as “depoliticized speech”, with the task of ‘giving an
historical intention a natural justification, thus making any contingency appear eternal’. However, a
realist interpretation of any type of myth is necessarily consistent with authorial intent. The reader
receives the text passively, as is, and so mimics the author’s intentions. Yet, what distinguishes a realist
reading from other potential readings? Meaning in myth is determined by the differences between the
authorial discourse and the universe of discourses.
Metaphoric processes in myth, which attune to equivalencies and similarities at one level at the
expense of differences at another level, mask and/or displace the potential for other interpretations to
surface (Barthes, 1973). Barthes’ approach to myth uncovers the ideological function of linguistic forms
like metaphor and metonymy, which effectively moves meaning beyond authorial intent to uncover
embedded ideology. Thus, the first order of signification is the lexical text, the second order of
signification is myth while the third order is ideology. Figure 1 below represents Barthes’ triadic
structure.
Barthes uses metalanguage to divide a text into three levels. Whereas the first two levels involve the
symbolic systems of communication related directly to the text, the third level signals a shift in focus,
from the symbolic systems of the metalanguage to the relational aspects among the signifiers. Here,
signification moves from discourses on the surface of the text to the deep structures of a social system.
The term ideology has many definitions in the literature, often depending on the paradigm orientation
of the author14. These range from functional and normative definitions to those based on psychoanalytic
perspectives and interpretive understanding. In a Critical Theory frame, ideology involves masking or
displacing some ideas for the benefit of a social class. In the context of a person’s understanding of a
text, the process of ideology, however defined, has two perspectives. There is a person’s individual
13 A “book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes on lectures given by Ferdinand de Saussure at the
University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911 ... published in 1916, after Saussure's death, and is generally regarded as the
starting point of structural linguistics” (from Wikipedia).
14 For example, “a set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party, or organization is based”
(Cambridge Dictionary); “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence"
(Althusser, 1975); “ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false
consciousness” (Fredrich Engels); “cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality"
(Macionis, 2010) and “a collection of normative beliefs and values that an individual or group holds for other than purely
epistemic reasons” (Honderich, 1995).

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(subjective) interpretation of a text. From another perspective, the structure of a text holds added
meanings. Barthes approach shifts the analysis from authorial intent to the influence of discursive
systems of a social practice. The ‘subject of ideology’ (the individual) and the ‘object of interpretation’
(the text) coalesce. If ideology works to promote why things are as they are, then Bathes’ approach to
myth reveals the less obvious political, economic and social values that reinforce this position.
Figure 1. Barthes’ semiotic framework for myth
1st
order
Literacy text of artefact
Signifiers Signified
SIGN OF AUTHORIAL INTENT
2nd order
Myth
Signifiers Signified I
SIGN OF MYTH
3rd order
Ideology
Signifiers Signified II
SIGN OF IDEOLOGY
Source; Barthes, 1973
2.2 SEMIOTIC THEORY
The history of semiotics as the study of signs stretches back into antiquity (Matejka, 1986). In the 1970s,
the expansion of studies in modern media and communication offered succinct introductions to the use
of semiotics in this field (Fiske & Hartley, 1978; Greimas, 1970; Hawkes, 1977; Metz, 1974). Semiotic
analysis concerns itself with the relationships between signs and the process by which meaning emanates
from these signs. In this process, people gain meaning by tapping into a system of culturally specific
codes, which give signs meaning.
Most theories of signification recognize Saussure’s (1974) tripartite concept of the sign: signifier +
signified = sign. However, in this arrangement, the signified need not necessarily be related to the
signifier (the absent signified in psychoanalytic theory, for example). The signified is purely a mental
construct. Fiske and Hartley (1978) describe the signifier as a physical object; for example, a sound,
printed word or image, while the sign is described as the totality of the signifier and the signified; it is
the “associative total that relates the two together”. To produce meaning, a person must negotiate a set
of codes, a process that produces a specific contextual meaning by encoding to one or more discourses.
These discourses may be cultural, political, economic, social or religious in nature, making a multiplicity
of readings possible.
2.3 CODES IN SEMIOTICS
In examining signification as an element of a social system, the idea of a system of codes is a prerequisite
to any interpretation of a society (cf. Giddens, 1973). The functional sociologist Talcott Parsons (1966)
interprets the concept of a code as an intermediary between language and culture. On the one hand, he
interprets language as a set of symbols given meaning by a code. On the other hand, a linguistic code is
a normative structure, which has the impress of a society’s cultural values15.
The idea of codes is essential to semiotic analysis. In the structural pursuit of meaning, the code is a
“intertextual construct”, which finds its meaning in a discourse (Culler, 1983a). John Sturrock (1979)
explains that objects without intrinsic significance gain meaning as signs by entering codes. These codes,
the intermediaries of communication, link the reader and the object in a cultural transaction. However,
objects are culturally functional only because they have a meaning negotiated by referring to the system
of codes. Codes supply the basis for a person’s social construction of reality16, one mediated and
structured by the social and/or cultural milieu. Nevertheless, the universe of codes also contains traces
15 The essential symbiotic relationship between one’s language and one’s culture probably accounts for the limited uptake of
Esperanto as a universal language.
16 Berger and Luckman (1975) provide a cogent account of people construct their own sense of reality in what is a complex
world; However, in some cases, a person’s reality may be induced by a mental disorder or drugs, creating situations that may
defy any meaningful semiotic analysis.

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of a society’s core dominant practices, meanings, values and beliefs. These codes, delivered through a
society’s mythologies, offer reasonable explanations of the status quo (Abercrombie et al., 1980;
Williams, 1977, 1982). For Barthes (1975), these shared structures are also subject to divisions into many
sub-codes.
The dominant codes, nevertheless, must reproduce themselves to survive. In addition, they must
displace or limit oppositional codes. To achieve these ends, some control is needed to ensure people
encode to the right messages – Stuart Hall (1977) writes about the role of hegemony and culture in value
reproduction while Louis Althusser (1975) writes about the role of the ideological state apparatuses in
achieving this control. Quite often though, the codes of social class are quite subtle and the mediated
messages in myth about class are only discernible in the deeper structures of a text.
One problem for semiotic analysis is that although the process liberates the text from authorial intent,
multiple alternative interpretations are always possible. In one, the reader links to the code by similarity
(a metaphoric process); in another, the reader links to the code by contiguity (metonymy) (see Wilden,
1980). The classification of various codes and sub-codes and the processes of metaphor and metonymy
are opportunities to reveal the relational aspects of the signifiers at the deeper structures of society — at
the crossroads of competing ideologies.
Barthes (1975) sets out two cardinal propositions helpful for the semiologist:
1. Signifiers have a paradigmatic relation to one another, created by the differences between each
signifier and the set to which it belongs, and
2. The relationship also exists among the codes within the narrative.
The coherence of a code stands in contrast to the often heterogeneous elements in a message (Heath,
1981). This culturally specificity allows codes to supply clues to meaning by referring to a variety of
phenomena, from dress, gestures and architecture to culinary habits, ethnicity and sport. Other less
obvious codes of representation like optical effects, background music or camera angles in television and
film productions also convey a specific signified above and beyond the obvious signified in the script.
For example. the Peter Gunn theme signifies all that is associated with film noir. Nonetheless, all codes
find expression in discourse; therefore, the relationship between codes is as important to textual analysis
as the identification of the codes themselves. Codes appear as prerequisites for interpretation17. In
semiotic analysis, codes are the agency of meaning and depending upon one’s worldview, codes have a
determining role in shaping political and economic thinking.
Ino Rossi (1983) suggests semiotic methods come to the fore when interpreting not only the
significations of ideological-charged signifiers but also when examining the logic of the structures in
which these ideological statements originate. While Barthes (1981) had his own worldview, he
nevertheless saw his own project as an activity in which a range of interpretations was possible depending
on one’s standpoint. Following Paul Ricoeur (1967), language is a structuring operation rather than a
structured inventory. Neither Bathes nor Ricoeur looked to reduce the findings of semiotic analysis to a
process based purely on theoretical deductions rather than one based on empirical observations.
In analyzing culturally bound media messages, Morley (1983) acknowledged the work of Burgelin
(1972)18 who suggests that although a message is a structured whole, the place occupied by individual
signifiers and the relation to the whole is more important that the number of times each signifier recurs.
The implication here for textual analysis is that myth is a structured whole. The relationship of individual
signifiers to the deep structures of society also requires attention. A post-structural approach helps in this
detection. This approach emphasises that critical links exist between the signifiers and the signifieds.
17 Levi-Strauss organizes the “system of correspondences underlying myth into separate ‘codes’ ... the heroes’ travels and their
changing location could be said to pertain to a special code, and the social links involved - ... marriage ... friendship … (belong
to) a social one” (Sperber, 1979. p. 41).
18 This article is accessible in McQuail, 1972.

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3. ON DISCOURSE
3.1 ON DISCOURSE
The concept of discourse reflects the etymological roots of its Latin verb discurrere, literally, to run
about, which suggests discourse holds confirming and conflicting statements. However, there are
concrete elements in a discourse and the symbols of language supply these concrete starting blocks
leading to the point where the subjects and objects in a discourse meet and collide with ideologies.
Discourse mediates culture as a semiotic system, which contain connected symbolic forms ripe for
analysis. This method involves seeking out patterns of repetition within a discourse and showing the
relationships of these patterns to not only one another but also to the discourse in its entirety. When a
discourse sets up privileged components, this process creates ideological-charged messages about the
subject matter. Certain ways of knowing and doing assume legitimacy within a discourse because the
narrative defers to a meta-narrative or ‘grand narrative’ for its authority (Lyotard, 1986). By stripping
the text of any privilege, Jean-François Lyotard reveals his “incredulity to meta-narratives”. However, if
meta-narratives are questionable, what is the basis of their authority?
3.2 FOUCAULT AND DISCOURSE
Discourse contain knowledge about many things including politics, economics and society. Its meta-
narrative works to reinforce the way things are. Simultaneously, the narrative devalues oppositional
ideas, thus setting the boundaries to this elucidation process.
Notwithstanding the problematic nature of discursive formations19 like history, Michel Foucault’s
concept of discourse helps overcome some of these obstacles. Begun in The Order of Things (1970) and
continued in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), Racevskis (1983) sees consistency in Foucault’s
concept of discourse. Neutralizing the “logophobia” of a discourse exposes its fundamental building
blocks. Foucault believed these fundamentals included power and desire, shaped by external constraints.
These foundational elements act as agents of exclusion in the form of a set of rules determining what
knowledge a discourse can and cannot convey.
For the individual, discourse defines the limits of the language it employs to deliver its messages
(White, 1979). Nevertheless, Foucault (1980a) digs deeper into discourse, implying that discursive
formations are only surface structures. For example, in writing about the ‘apparatus of sexuality’ as a
system of relations, he describes it as a:
Thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms,
regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and
philanthropic propositions, in short, the dais as much as the unsaid.
Here, Foucault could also be writing about any social phenomena, including social class.
Discourse work to bring coherence to a wide range of free-floating, discrete and independent ideas
(a matrix of signifiers, signifieds, signs and codes). It is a system that articulates and organizes discursive
formations at the symbolic level. Yet, Foucault’s aim in deconstructing discourse did not include an
alternative platform for political or social change. According to White (1979), Foucault’s own philosophy
approaches the pessimism of Nietzsche without his hopefulness. While Foucault’s oeuvre makes him
appear as the arch “anti-teleologist” according to White, this elevation does not help with the analysis of
the class specific elements in myth. Although Foucault does not deny the work of ideology, no discernible
theory of ideology appears in his work by which to relate one discourse to another. To bridge this gap,
we need to consider three propositions:
1. Discursive formations consist of a hierarchy of ideas
2. Discourse privilege some ideas over others
3. Privileged ideas reflect the characteristics and values of the dominant social institutions and
19 Discursive formations are those scattered and discontinuous signs in which the signifieds are problematic in the context of a
field of discourses. Discursivity become a stumbling block for epistemology. According to MacCabe (1981). Michel Pêcheux’s
(1982) work distinguished three forms of a discursive formation: (i) one of identification where the ‘reader’ accepts the position
offered by a discourse without problem, (ii) one of negation of the position offered, a counter identification or a refusal of the
position offered. This latter form opens into the possibility of (iii) disidentification – the reader is open to the possibility of
developing a critical understanding of the position offered by the discourse. In other words, a person becomes critically aware of
the contradictions within the discourse offered.

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classes of the society, which produce the discourse.
3.3 LANGUAUE, LACAN AND VOLONISOV
In the tradition of Critical Theory, some basic tenets in the works of V.N. Vološinov20 and Jacques
Lacan, while coming from very different standpoints, help explain the function of language. Some
fundamental ideas in their thinking show positive links between language, discourse and ideology. Lacan
(1977) suggests that ‘the signifier is that which represents a subject … not for another subject, but for
another signifier’ and this relationship cements the foundations of his psychoanalysis. Lacan’s
declaration sums it up:
The unconscious is only elementary as far as it entails elements of the signifier.
This proposition moves Lacan beyond the instinctual unconscious and replaces Freud’s various
complexes and anxieties (Freud, 1976; cf. Fromm, 1980) with one universal form of language acquisition.
Thus, the signifier become the key to unlocking all knowledge. If the unconscious and language have
similar structures, then the former consists of signifiers that require a discourse to extract meaning —
Lacan’s psychoanalysis is rooted in the domain of the signifier where meaning emerges at the crossroads
of The Imaginary and The Symbolic.
Lacan’s often disparaged work (cf. Sokal & Bricmont, 1999) has one quasi-mathematical equation
worth noting. Lacan’s S
/s stands for the process of signification for the subject (1977; Thom, 1981), which
encapsulates the “pre-eminence of the signifier over the subject”. To express this another way, discourse
interpolates people as subject within a discourse. Others too arrive at a similar description of the process
of signification, albeit from different paradigm orientations.
Levi-Strauss realized that the signifier comes before the signified and gains added meaning by
accessing the codes within a discourse. However, in Lacan’s world, the concept of The Real as a mental
process presents an obstacle for developing materialistic understandings of discursive formations
because he describes this realm as being non-discursive. The Real are those things that are and so, both
The Imaginary and The Symbolic appear as sub-sets of The Real. Gerald Hall (in Wilden, 1980) suggests,
all that is Real but not real (that is existent) is either Imaginary or Symbolic. The Real is a mental structure
that exists outside of the immediate experience of an individual and experience of The Real is only
possible through the intercessions of The Imaginary and The Symbolic. The Real fails to encroach on the
signifying chain (Jameson, 1977)
In Language, Semantics and Ideology: Stating the Obvious, Michel Pêcheux (1982) sets out ‘the
process of the Signifier in interpolation and identification’. He sketches a framework for a critical
understanding of discourse and argues that grounds exist for developing a materialist theory of discursive
formations.
MacCabe (1981) also refers to Pêcheux’s work, suggesting that discourse has no beginning or end
for the subject. Upon utterance, discourse has already captured the individual within its structure. Even
so, Pêcheux’s proposition that language is ‘the common basis of differentiated discourse processes’ does
not necessarily mean that individuals will read similar meanings into a discourse. While some people
will make sense of the discourse, the ideological processes at work will simultaneously act as agents of
exclusion or disruption for others. Put another way, ideology describes the limits to both discourse and
myth.
Vološinov (1973) helps with understanding how the inclusion/exclusion process works within a
discourse, especially when thinking of language as la lange and language as la parole. The effect of these
interdependent notions is highly ideological in the context of a communication exchange. Vološinov
moves literary analysis from abstractions in la lange to the concrete and parochial nature of particular
social constructs (cf. Eagleton, 1983). A similar view exists in Marx’s concept of language. In The
German Ideology, Marx suggests language is the “practical consciousness” of people. Vološinov (1973)
hits home, making the following assertion:
(T)he word is the ideological phenomenon par excellence … No cultural sign, once taken in and
given meaning, remains in isolation: it becomes part of the unity of the verbally constructed
consciousness.
Despite the political and psychoanalytic undertones in much of Vološinov’s work concerning
20 Terry Eagleton (1983:117) records that the Russian philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin wrote under the name of his
colleague V. N. Vološinov a pioneering study entitled Marxism and the Philosophy of Language [1929]. Tony Bennett (1979:75
fn.10) also examines the Bakhtin or Vološinov controversy.

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language and a widely held view that Saussurian orthodoxy infiltrates his thinking and shapes his
understandings (Williams, 1977), the value of his work for textual analysis is clear. He argues
persuasively for a dialogic theory of language. That is, signs require more than their paradigmatic and
syntagmatic relationships alone for their meaning. Rather, understandings must extent to include the
efficacy of the sign’s function within the context of the dialogic relationship formed between a ‘speaker’
and a ‘listener’ (Bennett, 1979). Ultimate meaning must, therefore, include reference to all discourses
and structures that give signs their meaning. Without this inclusion, signs would pose few problems in
interpretation, reducing language to a system for conveying undifferentiated symbols.
The very idea of a ‘word’ is replete with ideology. Vološinov suggests that when one utters words or
reacts to utterances, people engage ideology. Of equal importance is Vološinov’s proposition that a sign
also signifies — everything ideological has meaning; ‘without signs, there is no ideology’. In this light,
one cannot discard the possibility of the influence of Vološinov on the philosophy of Ludwig
Wittgenstein. The frontier of language pioneered by Vološinov captures in a nutshell the problems of
pre-semiotic analysis from a Critical Theory perspective because it is impossible to understand ideology
without a coherent theory of language (Coward & Ellis, 1977).

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4. FINDING MEANING IN MYTH
4.1 FINDING MEANING
Structuralist approaches to the study of narrative are well-documented (cf. Culler, 1975; Eagleton, 1983;
Hawkes, 1977; Todorov, 1969). In the field of anthropology, reviews and citations of Levi-Strauss’
structural analyses of historical narratives and myth are abundant21. Some ideas in the work of French
philosopher Jacques Derrida are also useful in unlocking meaning in myth. While Derrida managed to
avoid a direct assault in the attack on the post-modern French intellectuals by Sokal and Bricmont (1999),
it is hard for him to escape he tainted postmodern stable. Nevertheless, his basic views about authorship
at least are thought-provoking.
By highlighting the problematic nature of the word ‘meaning’, Derrida’s (1978, 1984, 1986)
underlying method reveals stumbling blocks on the road to the textual analysis of myth. He cautions that
the application of semiotic methods to reveal the meaning of words and narrative fails to elucidate
meaning per se. Derrida suggests that meaning emerges in a person’s mind because they already have a
store of signifieds and the new signified is different to those already present. This process effectively
destroys what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence” and creates a universe of signification.
However, like Foucault, Derrida (1984) too steps back from revealing any epistemological foundation or
paradigm orientation bracing his work. Nonetheless, his position cuts the signifier free from the
constraints of a narrative and opens a void for the play of signification.
This endless possibility for meaning creates is a paradox because no single meaning has its own
rationality. Derrida’s (1984) notion of “grammatology” helps resolve this contradiction in a process
where the original meaning evaporates and distributes itself along the history of signification. The “trace”
or the mark of each signifier’s passing lingers. This trace distinguishes one sign from another; it is ‘the
difference which opens appearance and signification’. Derrida employs the notion of différance as a
conceptual definition of the process by which signs differ and defer to one another. The conclusion here
is that the relational aspects between two signs is a significant source of meaning (Culler, 1979; Ray,
1984; Wood, 1979). The notion of the trace helps in deconstructing a text. Deconstruction is the analysis
of a text by reference to the text’s own in-built inconsistencies and contradictions. It reveals the self-
contradictory elements embedded deep within the ostensibly ‘logical arguments’ a text presents to its
reader (Culler, 1983a). For Derrida, his approach usurps the ‘logocentrism’22 of the text, refutes authorial
claims to closure and opens a text to a universe of interpretations. (Derrida, 1984; cf. Norris, 1982). If
the logic behind an argument in a text is faulty, then the system on which this logic is based is also
suspect.
4.2 TEXTS AND NARRATIVES
For Kress (1985), using symbols in an organized way creates a text in which discourse finds its
expression. Texts also create narratives although the notion of a narrative is ill-defined. The Swiss French
experimental New Wave film maker Jean-Luc Godard highlights this problem. In response to an
interviewer asking him if his films had a conventional beginning, middle and end, he replied “Yes, but
not necessarily in that order” (in Curran et al., 1977). While humour abounds in his reply, the audacity
of the question requires comment because it implies that narratives have a correct structure, which in turn
reflects a materialistic concern with closure.
When a person reads a narrative, an exchange occurs. At this point, the production and efficacy of
the signifieds is the primary process and more important than the philological object, which allows
communication to materially occur (Barthes, 1977). In a general sense, a narrative is a ‘broad structure
of integration’ found in all languages and cultures (Burgelin, 1972).
Following this line of thought, Chatman (1975) suggests that as a structure, narratives have two
components, a story and a discourse. Applying this proposition to myth, the story conveyed by myth
consists of its characters and denoted content while the discourse is the expression of the set of actual
narrative “statements”. For Chatman, if the structure of a narrative is indeed semiotic, there must be
21 See for example Wilden’s (1980) discussion about Levi-Strauss’ treatment of myth; see Badcock, 1975; Leach, 1982; Sperber,
1979; Sturrock, 1979).
22 “Logocentrism is a term coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages in the 1920s. It refers to the tradition of “Western”
science and philosophy that situates the logos, “the word” or the “act of speech”, as epistemologically superior in a system, or
structure, in which we may only know, or be present in, the world by way of a logocentric metaphysics” (from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism). In Of Grammatology, Derrida writes about “the metaphysics of the logos”.

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distinct ‘substances of form of content’ and ‘substances of form of expression’, which enable people to
negotiate the narrative as a semiotic system. Barthes’ (1978, 1977, 1975) concept of codes23 is useful
here (see Appendix A for some examples in the Myth of Er). Codes manifested as forms of expression
help in analyzing the narrative form since meaning requires this agency, which orbits like electrons
around a “nucleus” of legitimate knowledge.
Chatman and Barthes both emphasize the utility of constructing a hierarchy of the elements of a
narrative. They show the merits of categorizing a narrative into distinct and named components,
pinpointing the distinct parts of the text that issue similar messages. At this point for clarity, the term
‘narrative’ is best interpreted as a relation between the underlying codes, which give histoire meaning at
the level of discours. The narrative appears as the sum of all the underlying codes that infuse a text with
meaning – it’s a cultural process that relates or connects signifieds with one another.
Raymond Williams (1977) found more problems for textual analysis. For example, how can we show
a dominant discourse in a narrative and what criteria should we apply to determine the level of dominance
of ideas in a discourse? Peter Golding and Graham Murdoch (1978) offer advice about the important
distinction between “what to study” and “how to study”. In the context of the latter, critical analytical
practices allow for a good degree of interpretation to occur. Earlier applications of semiotic methods in
several diverse fields of study24 support the case for using mixed methods.
Eclectic approaches open new fields of interpretation and raises new areas of discussion that
traditional literary methods of textual analysis seem ill-equipped to explore. The approach moves the
analysis away from surface level subjects within a textual narrative to the deeper embedded meanings of
a discourse. This moves the focus of analysis from authorial intent to axial principles of a society.
4.3 MYTHS AND MYTHOLOGIES AS AGENDA SETTING TEXTS
In the 1980s, Blood (1982) noted the types of agenda setting techniques used in the traditional forms of
mass media. More recently, Feezell (2017) looked at “agenda setting through social media” in the digital
age. Bakshy et al. (2015) reviewed the exposure of people to “ideologically diverse news and opinion on
Facebook” while McCombs (2004) examined agenda-setting by the contemporary media. Skogerbø and
Krumsvik (2015) followed similar lines of investigation. The debate raging in the United States between
Fox News and other media outlets including CNN and MSNBC concerning the extent of Russian
interference on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election seems to seal the debate about the extent
of the new media’s role in agenda setting. The narratives of myths and mythologies perform similar
agenda setting functions. Historical studies also record the influence of the traditional forms of mass
media on popular consciousness. For example, Mayer (1968) showed the influence of newspapers in
Australian society and Williams (1982) examined the development of advertising on the formation of a
“consumer revolution” in France.
Recent research by classical scholars also added new dimensions to modern interpretations of
historical narratives. The voluminous work of G.E.M de Ste. Croix (1981) gives reasons to believe that
myth in antiquity functioned on an ideological level to legitimize the values and practices of the rulers
of the time. Others also suggest that varying degrees of bias existed even in the most rudimentary forms
of communication. Acosta (1979) writes that historical “mass communication” experts25 trace:
The origin of these media back to the radio or the telegraph, as well as to the. African drums or the
smoke signals of the Plains Indians. They consider the mural motifs of the Egyptian tombs ... the
Aztecs and Mayan codexes as ancestors of modern comics. When they refer to the architecture of
ancient civilizations, they interpret it as an effective mass media for the transmission of signs which
bare the ideology and culture of the epoch.
While the types of signifieds in the discourse mediated by myth are considerable, in a Critical Theory
framework, this project selected social class as an anchor to explore any residual bias in these discourses.
23 Barthes suggests five common codes, or more accurately, perspectives, present in all texts. As tools for textual analysis, these
codes include Hermeneutic (meaning in a text that is present but hidden); Proairetic (the sequence of events or actions in a text);
Semantic (not altogether clear in Barthes’ work but generally sees as consisting of “semes” - texts that connote rather than denote
with a “flicker of meaning”); Symbolic (related to binary oppositions or themes in the text) and Cultural (a category of codes
outside the text; that is, the storehouse of knowledge people refer to in negotiating and interpreting everyday life).
24 For example, see Hawkes, 1977 (in semiotic theory); Rossi, 1983 (in the sociology of signs); Fiske and Hartley, 1978 (in
media studies); Pêcheux, 1982 (in Marxism); Felman, 1982; Metz, 1972 (in psychoanalysis).
25 Acosta refers, for example, refer his readers to Lancelot Hogben's book From Cave Paintings to Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope
of Human Communication (1949).

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5. THE STRUCTURE OF AN AFTERTHOUGHT
5.1 THE MYTH OF ER
The Myth of Er (hereafter referred to as Er), the last book in Plato’s Republic26, is a moral order thesis
that reveals pertinent information about the social class structure of antiquity. While the narrative type is
not unusual in classical Greek literature, it acquires gravitas because of its inclusion in the Republic.
However, classicists like Fite believe Plato included the story only as an afterthought; he sees no relevant
meaning for the myth’s presence (in Levinson, 1953:35). Fite’s reading is at one pole of all readings and
one which promotes the exclusivity of the authorial text. The myth itself is not of the kind Levi-Strauss
sees as having a collective authorship and if meaning evaporates along the history of signification, then
so does authorial intent; in this case, Plato’s.
Whether a collective authorship exists, the deep meaning of Er tells a tale about the preferred ways
of knowing about social class in antiquity. Er occupies a small fraction of the text of Republic, which
reinforces Fite’s opinion that it was simply an addendum. However, at the third order of signification, Er
has powerful signifieds that subvert the apparently ordinary aspects of the first and second order
signifieds, even if Er was an afterthought, plucked from Plato’s literary basket or a fill-in demanded by
some antiquarian editor.
Curiously, Plato writes in the Republic of the possibility of constructing some magnificent myth,
which would carry within itself a conviction to the entire community (Book 3). Perhaps Plato achieved
his goal unconsciously in Er? The sociologist Daniel Bell (1976a) implicitly touches on this possibility.
For Bell, the chief point of Er is that a person’s “happiness or misery throughout eternity depends on ...
actions in this life”. In Er, “philosophical principles are joined with Orphic and popular mythology to
show men how to escape from the cycle of generations”. Despite its brevity, certain convictions abound
in Er.
In contemporary society, little bits of information in the mass media deliver powerful messages. The
innocuous fill-ins (fait-divers in the French language) that increasingly populate newspapers, television
and social media platforms are in fact complex structures replete with ideological message (Barthes,
1981). Television commercial clearly show how very detailed stories with intricate plots, performances,
drama and resolutions occur in the space only a few seconds. Other media too show how ideology works
in the brief messages disseminated across both traditional and digital media platforms (Bakshy et al.,
2015; cf. Jhally et al., 1984; Williamson, 1978). If the author of these messages is ‘modern capitalism’,
could the author of Er be classical Greek society?
Answers to this question require understanding how the third order of signification works. While the
second order of signification reveals the distortions of the first order, the narrative neither hides nor
reveals anything of life changing importance - its principal function is to provide history with
metaphysical privilege (Barthes, 1973).
5.1 MYTH AS TEXT
The method of analysis follows approaches used in the deconstruction of television advertisements and
involves six steps: (i) Diegesis, (ii) Plot synopsis, (iii) Principal character in the text, (iv) Identification
of codes, (v) Identification of the narrative structure and (vi) Identification of the deep structure.
5.2 DIEGESES
This step focuses on the denoted content, recording what is there and how is it organized. At the first and
second levels of signification, the knowledge derived is parochial. Er is a participant observer’s account
of “wonderous” things, a record of the last experiences reported by a warrior miraculously restored to
life to explain the “things that await the just man and the unjust man after death”. Er’s narrative follows
the triadic form of life / death / after life (or resurrection). This eschatology links to a moral order, a
common enough arrangement recorded in the anthropological literature on worldview.
5.3 PLOT SYSOPSIS
The text begins and ends in modes that satisfy conventional realist criteria although imaginary characters
26 Quotations within the text are from Lee’s translation (Plato, 1975, pp. 447-455; cf. Stewart, 1905) and cited thus: ‘laughter
and wonder’.

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infiltrate the narrative’s middle sections. Some characters signify historical referents while others find
their expression in historical events even though they also appear in popular legends or myth27. Er’s
journey begins on earth. A surreal juxtaposition of events and objects ensue with some occurring in an
imaginary mode of representation. As a participant observer, Er relates his tale. Souls arrive and leave
the chasms and depending on the direction from which they arrived, they relay tales of sadness or pleasure
to one another. Following seven days spent in the meadow, the Souls depart and travel to confront the
Three Fates. This scene allows for a brief description of the Greek universe but with the narrative’s
dream-like changes, meaning is at best, elusive28. The Souls then choose ‘different patterns of life ...
(from) ... every conceivable kind, animal and human’. At this point, everything is at stake.
Before the Thread of Destiny irreversibly seals the fate of each Soul, Er speaks of the Souls choosing
their lives as a “sight to move pity and laughter and wonder”. The Souls continue together to the Plain
of Lethe and eventually camp by the Forgetful River. Here, each Soul drinks and forgets. After their birth
accompanied by earthquakes and thunder, the Souls begin their new journey. The myth concludes with
a message for the living – if people recollect Er’s tale, they can transverse the Plain of Lethe without
corrupting their Souls. With this advice, Plato reinforces the belief in the immortality of the Soul and the
importance of pursuing a moral life.
5.4 PRINCIPAL CAST
▪ Er, the slain warrior
▪ Daughters of Necessity29 (concerned with things past, present and to come)
▪ Plato, a Greek scholar and narrator
▪ Glaucon, Plato’s older brother listening to the tale
▪ The Souls, including Odysseus (the Greek hero), Thersites (impudent army agitator against
authority), Orpheus (mystagogue and singer), Agamemnon (leader of the Greeks at Troy), Ajax
(the Greek hero), Atalanta (athlete), Thamyris (the bard), Epeius (carpenter) and Others
5.5 CODES
Among several codes vying for supremacy in Er is the Historical Code. This code creates discourses
within discourses because while the text is a literary document, certain referents within the text refer
directly to specific historical characters and events. Metaphysical, religious, temporal and cosmological
codes are also prominent in the narrative. These recurring codes include referents to Greek Gods, an
afterlife, dreams, the cosmos, the Souls, patterns and forms of life, the journey, the Chasms, the Plain of
Lethe and other geographic locations. The Literary-Textual code refers to the literary text of Er and the
notion that the text is a Greek tale. Appendix A contains some examples of Barthes’ more extensive
categories of codes in Er.
5.6 DISCOURSES
Codes receive legitimacy from the specific bodies of the knowledge that allow statements to made and
understood. The dominant discourses in Er include the Historical Discourse with its referents to historical
events, places and authentic characters. The same referents appear in historical and contemporary
accounts of classical Greece. To some extent, the denoted content of Er reflects many of values and
beliefs prevalent in Plato’s time.
The Metaphysical Discourse includes eschatological referents linked to a moral order thesis. These
links legitimize the concepts of Gods, the nature of humans and the afterlife. The Political Discourse
allows characters within the text to justify politically motivated behaviours and legitimate their
subsequent actions. This is the tactical discourse in Er because Plato’s argument in Republic, viewed in
its entirety, rationalizes Kingship (Mumford, 1973).
27 For example, Er, Odysseus and Thersites; see Benet (1973) for a brief biography of the main characters.
28 Freud (1976) comments that ‘reversal or turning a thing into its opposite is one of the main representations favored by the
dream work and one which is capable of employment in the most diverse directions’.
29 “The myth mentions ‘The Spindle of Necessity’, in that the cosmos is represented by the Spindle attended by sirens and the
three daughters of the Goddess Necessity known collectively as The Fates, whose duty is to keep the rims of the spindle
revolving. The Fates, Sirens, and Spindle are used in the Republic, partly to help explain how known celestial bodies revolved
around the Earth according to Plato's cosmology” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er).

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5.7 NARRATIVE STRUCTURE (THE HISTOIRE)
Figure 2 is a topology of the events in Er, occurring in either the realist or imaginary mode. These are,
nonetheless, arbitrary distinctions. According to Barthes (1973), one would need to link into the same
metaphysical discourse to find the exact meaning ancient Greeks found after reading Er30. The
approximations below genuflect to Barthes’ position.
Er begins and ends in the real world, at the funeral pyre. Later events move in linear time toward the
rebirth. At the pyre, Er opens his eyes and realises his odd situation. Selective amnesia solves the
awkward biological and physical contradictions associated with his rebirth. Er therefore realises the
purpose behind his preservation, which is to relate his experience of the afterlife.
When the location of each scenes in the narrative is set in a space circumscribed by the intersection
of the dimensions of the modes of representation and linear time, discourses in the imaginary realm
proliferate. The works of Alain Robbe-Grillet31 and Vološinov add insight here. Robbe-Grillet sees myth
as akin to a society’s collective unconscious (in Righter, 1975). Vološinov also stresses that ‘the creation
of the mythological image is analogous to dream work’. Furthermore, myth approximates the collective
dream of a community (1976). These interpretations are reminiscent of Lacan’s notion of The Real’s
extrinsic relationship with the signifying chain.
The salient point from a Critical Theory standpoint is whether the third order signifiers in Er serve
factional interests. Barthes needs a helping hand here. While Eagleton (1983) see Barthes’ oeuvre falling
short of its political potential, Pêcheux (1982) adds strength to the argument that myth and ideology are
two sides of the same coin. As discursive formations, they stand for and legitimize a dominant set of
political, social and economic practices.
While the analysis of Er tips its hat to psychoanalytic interpretations, the ‘collective dream’ of a
society also depends on society’s “ideostructure”32 as much as it does on the vagaries of unconscious
motivation. The concept of ideostructure includes all material things and structures that have ideological
implications. To paraphrase Lacan, meaning is determined at a point where an individual’s memory store
of identities and opposites of The Imaginary translates into the collective differences of The Symbolic,
which is the realm of the signifier. This is the Rubicon moment for Lacan; he sees the unconscious
consisting of signifiers in the real world while Freud sees it populated by primordial and instinctual
agents of motivation.
Figure 2. Topology of Events in ER: realist versus imaginary modes
narrative time >>>
continuation of life >>>
30 Sculptures of warriors, nobles, Gods and athletes made by the Greeks and Romans of antiquity were much admired during the
Renaissance. Shaped in marble and appearing almost pure white by the passing of time, they represented an ideal human form.
Yet, in their time, they would have been adorned with garish pigments and loud colors. They would have meant something quite
different to their than the meaning attached to them during the Renaissance.
31 See his entry in Wikipedia for a review of his works (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Robbe-Grillet).
32 Wilden (1977) develops and explores this notion to describe the network of unspoken information and arrangements of things
that subtly connote power relationships. For example, a crown connotes power and Kingship, seating arrangements at a Board
meeting implies status and or gender equality, while the ground plan of a Bororo Indian village connotes the hierarchy of
economic and kinship relations (Part 1: Section 1.3:9).
The Fates * The Lottery *
Forgetful River *
Thread of Destiny *
The Choice *
The Meadow *
[the Tyrant]
The Chasms *
Cosmology
* Funeral Pyre Rebirth *
Imaginary mode of representation
Realist mode of representation

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In Critical Theory, the material world is one where certain meaning derived from articulations, images
and/or texts legitimise political and economic practices that favour one social class over all others. The
favoured class reaps the economic and subsequent benefits of this arrangement. For the others, ideology
works to distort a person’s understanding of the actual conditions under which they live. In short, the
status quo is the way things are. Aspects of a moral-order thesis manifests itself at many points in Er,
including the continual references to rewards that go with goodness. In contrast, there are explicit
accounts of the punishment that awaits the “incurably wicked”.
THE MORAL ORDER THESIS IN ER
Now here, my dear Glaucon, is the whole risk for a human being, as it seems. And on this account each
of us must, to the neglect of other studies, above all see to it that he is a seeker and student of that study
by which he might be able to learn and find out who will give him the capacity and the knowledge to
distinguish the good and the bad life, and so everywhere and always to choose the better from among
those that are possible. He will consider all the things we have just mentioned and how in combination
and separately they affect the virtue of a life. Thus he may know the effects, bad and good, of beauty
mixed with poverty or wealth and accompanied by this or that habit of soul; and the effects of any
particular mixture with one another of good and bad birth, private station and ruling office, strength and
weakness, facility and difficulty in learning, and all such things that are connected with a soul by nature
or are acquired. From all this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose—in looking off toward the
nature of the soul—between the worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward
becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it to becoming juster. He will let everything else
go. For we have seen that this is the most important choice for him in life and death. He must go to
Hades adamantly holding to this opinion so that he won't be daunted by wealth and such evils there,
and rush into tyrannies and other such deeds by which he would work many irreparable evils, and himself
undergo still greater suffering; but rather he will know how always to choose the life between such
extremes and flee the excesses in either direction in this life, so far as is possible, and in all of the next
life. For in this way a human being becomes happiest (Bloom, 1991).
The insistence on the importance of the exact moment that the Souls choose their lives suggests it is
a momentous point in Er. This emphasis may be a factor in Daniel Bell’s (1976a) view that Er’s principal
purpose is to convey the message that a person’s happiness or misery throughout eternity is contingent
upon one’s actions in the present. Thus, Bell suggests that the philosophical traditions combine with
religious beliefs to show to people how to escapee the fate reserved for the wicked. However,
explanations of this type conceal more than they divulge. The third order of signification holds signs that
carry significant ideological convictions. Ideologies reinforced in the text are not obvious at either the
first or second orders of signification. Rather, these ideologies gain strength in the seemingly
inconsequential and repetitive act of the Souls choosing one form of life over all other possible lives. In
this act lies the roots of the discourses on social class in Greece.
Granted, Souls make choices in Er but doing so creates a paradox. How can an act of seemingly
autonomous choice reinforce Free Will and the Reign of Law simultaneously? At least one function of
Er is to resolve this situation and legitimize the order of things in classical Greece. The description of the
Souls’ choices as either a reaction or a transcendence, depends on whether the act reacts against a former
life or an attempt to keep aspects of that life in an altered state.
THE SOULS’ CHOICES
Odysseus reacts against memories of suffering in his elite life by choosing the life of a commoner. This
transformation creates an opposition around elite versus common. It is also a reaction, which cures
Odysseus of his ambition. Thus, another opposition is ambitious versus unambitious. For Orpheus, the
transformation into a swan is a reaction against the fate he suffered at the hands of women - the choice
guarantees that women will never again dominate him. However, there are still traces of femininity in
the transformation because within aesthetics, the swan has been traditionally associated as a sign of the
feminine.
Although the opposition of male/female is dominant in the transformation of Orpheus, the referent
of the singer and a musical life is also significant. Plato asserts in Laws that ‘whoever cannot hold his
place in the chorus is not really an educated man’ and to hold one’s place meant to be able to sing and
dance at the same time (De Grazia, 1962). For the elite of classical Greece, music was synonymous with
a cultured life. In this context, De Grazia points out that it is difficult for those in contemporary society
to realize the ‘shame that Themistocles, the non-aristocratic Athenian General and statesman, felt at a
banquet when the lyre was passed around and he didn’t know how to play it’ ... he was an upstart who
lacked the education Plato extolled (1962).
The referent to music and a musical life also creates the oppositions of educated/uneducated (or
ignorant, musical/non-musical, cultured/uncultured (or uncouth). Thamyris, a Thracian poet who loved
the beautiful youth Hyacinthus, transcended from a bard to a nightingale, perhaps motivated by an
unconscious desire for a musical life, again reinforces to supreme status of music in the culture and
society of Greece in antiquity – according to De Grazia, all other disciplines bowed before music in

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classical Greece. In its broadest interpretation, music signifies the power of the Muses. The Muses
blinded Thamyris and made him mute for daring to challenge their authority.
While the dominant opposition here is authority/rebellion, the is also a psychoanalytic opposition
of self/other, structured around Thamyris’ (unconscious) attempt to transfer the self to the other. The
concept of the self in psychoanalysis, applied here, refers to the value of Thamyris’ perception of himself.
This value involves self-esteem. The ‘healthy narcissism’ signified by Thamyris’ transference of the self
on to the other is indicative of the legitimacy of the values he held (see Rycroft, 1968).
While the respective choices of Ajax and Agamemnon transcended and reacted against their former
lives, both nevertheless, choose a life symbolizing their former noble station. Agamemnon choice of the
‘King of Beasts’ symbolizes resurrection, a conquest over death and a fitting reward for a brave and just
man. Ajax transcended the hate of his wife Clytemnestra (Queen of Mycenae in ancient Greek legend)
by choosing the life of an eagle, a bird noted for its strength, size and power.
According to legend, Atalanta is unable to resist temptation and pick up the golden apple left by her
suitor during a race. This lost momentum causes her to lose the race. Unable to resist the great honour
and temptation of an athletic life, Atalanta chooses an athlete’s life. In classical Greece, athletics signified
the virtue of courage (see De Grazia, 1963).
Epeius, the carpenter of Troy, keeps the productivity of his former life by choosing to become a
craftsperson, a choice that ensures he will continue to belong to the group of free and independent
artisans, a less repressed class in ancient Greece. A craftsperson, commonly called a technite, was a
person with a high degree of work-related skills. Even so, they existed on the lower levels of the hierarchy
of free people in antiquity (see de Ste. Croix, 1981).
A rationale for each Soul’s unique choice appears in Table 1 below by referring to the first order
signifiers in the text as an historical discourse. The psychoanalytic discourse suggests the text also has
several referents, which work at the level of the unconscious. These absent signifieds occur at a point
beyond both textual and linguistic analysis, where the discourses intersect with the unconscious mind.
This is Lacan’s Imaginary, where the signifies slide beneath their lexical signifiers. The psychoanalytic
discourse is important to interpretation of the Souls’ choices and the historical reader’s interpretation of
the messages in Er.
The normative consensus underpinning the choices of individual Souls stems from the first order
signs in the narrative. This is the realm of the metaphoric processes of identification and symbolism. The
processes of metonymy and synecdoche in second order signifiers displace metaphor and symbolism.
For Plato’s contemporaries, the former process would have naturally reinforced the proper order of
things.
Table 1. The Souls’ Choices
SOUL CHARACTER TRANSFORMATION CHOICE RATIONALE
Odysseus shrewd, noble reaction ordinary man the memory of suffering cursed ambition;
years for uneventful life
Orpheus mystagogue,
singer
reaction swan torn to pieces by women followers of
Dionysius; will not be oppressed by women
Thamyris bard transcendence nightingale challenged the Muses, blinded and deprived
of power of song
Ajax King, noble
warrior
reaction and
transcendence
lion commits suicide in disappointment at losing
Agamemnon’s arms at Troy
Atalanta swift runner transcendence athlete her suitors were killed if defeated in a
footrace
Agamemnon King of
Mycenae
transcendence and
reaction
eagle eventually murdered by his wife; suffered
and so hated humanity
Epeius Chief
carpenter
transcendence skilled
craftsperson
wanted to maintain his former productivity
Thersites Army officer reaction ape or buffoon he spoke out against the authority of the
king; impudent and criticized the established
order
5.8 THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF MYTH
The meta-language shift from first order to second order signs also flags a shift in the focus of analysis
– from ‘subject’ to the discourse in which the subject finds its expression. For Culler (1983b), this is to
arrive at the ‘systems of convention operating within the discursive systems of a social practice’.
The problem for the analysis of myth is to discover the symbolic system from which the narrative
structure arises. That is, what is missing from the narrative that would complete a discourse on social

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class? Answers require a structural analysis of the Souls’ choices. The table below shows the types of
choices made by the Souls and the historical and legendary information available about each Soul.
Table 2. Structural Oppositions within the Souls’ Choices
SOUL STRUCTURAL OPPOSITIONS SOUL STRUCTURAL OPPOSITIONS
Odysseus elite/common
ambitions/unambitious
Atalanta love/hate
athletic/non-athletic
courageous/uncourageous
Orpheus male/female
man/woman
musical/non-musical
cultured/uncultured
educated/uneducated
Agamemnon resurrection/death
elite/common
Kingship/subject
Thamyris authority/disorder
conformity/rebellion
musical/non-musical
self/other
Epeius productive/unproductive
skilled/unskilled
creative/uncreative
Ajax love/hate
male/female
man/women
power/powerlessness
Thersites Kingship/subject
authority/rebellion
order/disorder
The choice of Thersites is a revealing one that deserves closer analysis in the contexts of social class
in classical Greece and the role of the memory trace in signification. Thersites seditious speech at Troy
rings of rebellion and his choice of a simian life is befitting one who railed openly against the established
order of things. This choice, however, is more complex that it appears to be in the first and second order
signs in Er.
The sign of Thersites (see Figure 3) has come to connote a specific character type in literature.
William Shakespeare, for example, taps into this memory trace in Troilus and Cressida, where Thersites
is a “slave whose gall coins slander like a mint” (in Benet, 1973). Homer’s Iliad also has one of the first-
recorded descriptions of a popular agitator where he taps the potential of his reader’s unconscious
memory store to resuscitate traces of Thersites, the Greek officer who spoke out against Agamemnon at
Troy.
De Ste. Croix (1981) summarizes Thersites’ speech and highlights that the officer is:
... all set for sailing home and leaving Agamemnon and his noble friends to find out how dependent
they really are on rank and file; and he makes great play with the large share of spoils, in gold and
bronze and women that the King receives from the host.
Karl Marx would have been pleased with Thersites’ insights and outburst. However, Homer also records
the army as disapproving of Thersites’ treasonable outpourings. Homer presents a caricature of Thersites;
he describes him as:
... not merely as an irrepressible man who, when he felt inclined to bait his royal masters, was never
at a loss for some vulgar quip, empty and scurrilous indeed, but well calculated to amuse the troops
... and (he was)... the ugliest man that had come to Troy, he had a game foot and was bandy-legged33,
his rounded shoulders almost met across his chest, and above them rose an egg-shaped head, which
sprouted a few short hairs (in de Ste. Croix, 1981).
While being a wonderful literary description of a player at Troy, there is more at stake here than conveyed
by the authorial text. Homer’s sketch of Thersites effectively masks any notion of a class struggle in
antiquity. But how is this discourse open to this interpretation and how does the concept of a ‘class
struggle’ apply to classical Greece society, which is surely a pre-capitalist political economy? In
Elements of Semiology (1978), Barthes answers this question.
Extending Barthes’ three-ordered semiological, the sign of Thersites appears below. Here, the
arguments developed following Barthes are convincing. However slight the knowledge of the real is, as
33 Based on the structural opposition of good/bad, personal traits like scars, limps, twitches and physical deformities often
signify unsavory characters in film and television.

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signified by the language of the narrative, “there always remains something denoted (otherwise the
discourse would not be possible) and the connotators are always in the last analysis discontinuous and
scattered signs, naturalized by the denoted language which carry them”. But what do these processes
signify in the mind of the reader?
Barthes is candid in his answer. The signifieds have a symbiotic relationship to the constituent
elements of the social structure, to history, culture and knowledge. In his final analysis, ‘ideology is the
form of the signifieds of connotation, while rhetoric is the form of the connotation’ (1978), that is, the
signifiers of connotation.
The rhetoric of the text does battle with the earlier signifieds of ideology in the mind of the reader.
Myth signals that this is a battle between conscious and unconscious ideological traces and not a simple
accumulation of personal knowledge. Such battles over interpretation would not pose difficulties if the
reading reflected primarily the text’s literal meaning; that is, Er is only popular storytelling in the Orphic
tradition.
De Ste. Croix (1981) is equally convinced that interpretations of class drawn from Critical Theory
help unravel the concept of social class in classical Greece. He argues that social class is a manifestation
of the process of exploitation; thus, social class is a ‘collective social expression’ of this situation. De
Ste. Croix concludes that in Classical Greece, the proprietorial class appropriated surplus value34 by
controlling the dominant mode of production — unfree labour and tributes from conquests.
Figure 3. The Sign of Thersites
1st Order
General
[ opposite to]
2nd Order
Meta-language
3rd
Order
Connotation
Given the ideas articulated by Barthes on the structure of myth and de Ste. Croix’s analysis of Greece
in antiquity, the choice of Thersites tells us something about the deep structure underpinning Plato’s
world. Donning a simian form reduces Thersites’ vitriol at Troy to foolish babble although his words
reveal some quite sophisticated understandings about the social class structure, politics and economics
underpinning his society. Certainly, this knowledge includes the nature of the exercise of power over
subordinates, the use of privilege for personal enrichment and the denigration of women by measuring
their worth with capital and private property.
5.9 THE MEANING OF AN AFTERTHOUGHT
One social class is conspicuously absent from the narrative is unfree labour. The Greek proprietorial
class existed by extracting surplus value from the work of others so it is reasonable to conclude that no
Soul would choose this life form, even as a penance for past sins. As de Ste. Croix (1981) points out,
whenever unfree labour raises it head in the home of democracy, slavery is at the forefront. If we swap
the choice of Thersites with the choices of Odysseus, Ajax, Epeius or Agamemnon, we would also invert
the very memory trace that governed and prescribed these choices.
34 A lynchpin of Marx’s theory of political economy – at its basic interpretation, surplus value is equal to the new value resulting
from the labour of workers above and beyond the cost of their own labour, which is subsequently appropriated by the owners of
the mode of production (in Marx’s worldview, the “capitalists”) as profit when products are sold (see Marx’s Theories of Surplus
Value, Capital I and Grundrisse).
Signifier Signified
Signifier I Signified Signifier II
Sign of Thersites
Knowledge of the Real
Signifier Signified
Rhetoric: a
moral order
tale
Ideology: the
order of things;
social classes in
antiquity
Authorial Intent

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Critical Theory suggests the meaning of Er is to propagate the values of the society with a subtle nod
to the legitimacy of the Greek mode of economic production and Kingship. The dominant value system
is in the positive values and virtues contained in the structural oppositions derived from the Souls’
choices (see Table 2 above). These choices place the values of patriarchy, authoritarianism, privilege,
obedience and Kingship on a pedestal. Among the ideal personal virtues, attributes and skills valued by
Greek society are those made possible by education and an ability to not only appreciate ‘music’ but also
to play musical instruments. Themistocles’ shame reinforced values of this type. Respect for the skills
and productive endeavours of some free craftspeople and artisans also reinforced the value of musical
skills. Agamemnon’s choice likewise tells us something about resurrection as the reward for a just life.
In this light, the social class system of classical Greece revolved around the hierarchies of metaphysics
and materialism sketched in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. The Hierarchy of the Classical Greek Social Structure
Metaphysics Rules Realm of the Gods
Materialism Chooses Human Realm
Animal Realm
The free members of Greek society had relative autonomy within society within the determinants set by
the Gods. A disclaimer made by the Gods in Er displaces all responsibility for systematic inequality on
the actions of people. Like the function of the Hindu caste system, a person’s place in the Greek social
class system was determined by metaphysics35. Consequently, remedial action to escape the class system
was beyond human intervention. The Daughters of Necessity are also accomplices in this metaphysical
sleight of hand, for being concerned with ‘things past, present and future’, they are the metaphoric
expression of the triadic eschatology life / death / rebirth.
At the third level of signification, the values that braced classical Greek society shine through.
Knowledge of these values are the prerequisites for ultimate happiness, the result of choosing the
preferred path.
Figure 5. The Preferred Path
Life Death
Non-life Rebirth =
a restatement of dominant values
Only through the preferred path can a person’s life complete the full circle. Er seals the fate of society’s
non-conformists and the rebellious members because they can never walk that road. However,
contentment awaits those who freely choose within the cultural limits described by the natural, dominant
and materialistic values system celebrated by Plato in the Myth of Er.
The work of de Ste. Croix (1981) suggests that the dominant social class in antiquity included people
who owned land and slaves. This proprietorial class controlled the economic mode of production, a
proposition that both Marx and Engels would recognize. In this light, the mythic elements in Er legitimize
this order of things, a situation that will remain so for as long as the Souls and other just people on the
journey choose the right path. As a political discourse, Er shows the limits of politics by masking and
displacing oppositional codes and alternative explanations about the way things are. By subtly mediating
the preferred values of classical Greek society, the role of authority, the virtue of obedience and the
legitimacy of Kingship appear at the pinnacle of the value system.
As expected, Er makes no reference of the class of people whose labour supported the Greek
economy. The choice of Thersites sealed the fate of this group and reinforced the belief that goods,
35 Metaphysics rules as in the catchphrase in ‘metaphysics rules supreme’ but also in the sense of a ‘set of rules’ that govern
behaviour.

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property, women and wealth were natural and legitimate by-products of power and privilege. Plato and
his contemporaries believed these outcomes as a matter of fact. As de Ste. Croix suggests, Plato is the
“arch-enemy of freedom and democracy”. It appears that Plato’s inclusion of the Myth of Er in the
Republic is far more than a mere afterthought.

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6. TELEVISION AS A CULTURAL FORM
6.1 THE BARDIC FUNCTION OF TELEVISION IN CULTURE
As a cultural form, television turns mundane objects into mythologies (Kellner, 1982). In the modern
world, Fisk and Hartley (1978) note television’s influence on how people decide what is important and
valuable in their social circle. Television offers its audience a combination of images, music, atmosphere
and words that convey powerful covert and overt messages about their society and culture. For Fiske and
Hartley (1978), television’s process of selective communication is akin to anthropology’s oral tradition,
a form of communication that requires direct contact between people within a social structure (cf.
Campbell, 1991; Levi-Strass, 1979; Lewis, 1981). Fiske and Hartley call this selective aspect of
communication as “television’s bardic function”.
The bard held a pivotal position in pre-industrial society, spreading vital information to a generally
ill-informed and/or illiterate population. Today, television and the print media combine with the
ubiquitous social media platforms of the digital age, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to make
the penetration of the mass media almost total. Thus, the mythic elements in the texts of television are
highly influential. Critical Theory has long insinuated causal links between media messages and the
formation of political values and social attitudes.
6.2 REFECTIONS OF RELITY
Levi-Strauss (1979) borrows from physics to make an analogy between the relationship of narrative
myth to la langue and la parole. He compares this relationship to that of the “intermediary entity between
a statistical aggregate of molecules and the molecular structure itself”. The relationship between the two
is an integral part of the totality; each is mutually inclusive and interdependent.
According to Barthes (1977), contemporary myth is discontinuous and no longer the sole provenance
of a narrative as implied by Levi-Strauss. Myth has become a “corpus of phrases” in which the myth has
evaporated, “leaving — so much more insidious — the mythical”. Barthes (1973) views myth as
relatively ‘empty’; indeed, one of its functions is to “empty reality” (cf. Derrida, 1978). The notion that
myth is empty suggests its functions like a mirror. While empty, a mirror has the physical properties to
reflect the surrounding environment. This reflective property is clear in Géza Róheim’s conceptual
interpretation of anthropology and psychoanalysis. Róheim concludes that myths are not only the
reflections (or mirror images) of an internal reality but also an a-historical reflection of contemporary
reality. Myths are far more than texts recalling some remote historical experience (see Robinson, 1969).
The mass media literature suggests that television (and the recent literature on the new forms of social
media) function partly to not only reflect a reality but also to shape and limit the agenda for political,
economic and social debate36. Marx too saw this function at work in several settings and employs the
idea of reflection to explain some economic concepts37. In a ‘psychological footnote’, Marx come close
to the concept of ‘the mirror phase’ of The Imaginary in Lacanian psychoanalysis38.
Without delving too deeply into Lacan’s mirror phrase in childhood, the concept is also relevant to
adult psychology. The ego is a construction built on the tension between approximations — between
opposition and identification. This tension is determined in the relation between the self and The Other.
The Other is an environment or the locus of experience from where a person seeks gratification. The idea
of identification finds expression in the intrusion of the axis of identification onto the axis of desire (see
Rose, 1981). For Lacan, this is an intrusion motivated by a desire of The Other and expressed though the
agency of language. Freud also acknowledged the importance of the process of identification, where it is
the earliest expression of our emotional ties with others. Extending this idea, television fulfil certain
desires. Audiences quickly recognize the meaning attached to characters, emotions, plots, stage settings
and locations in television programs. The attachment elevates screen images in ways that create a false
symbolic mirror of personal identity. Socially constructed television images have a profound effect on
36 For mass media, see Barr, 1980; Berger, 1972; Chaney, 1983; Lovell, 1983; Rose, 1979; Williamson, 1978; in social media
contexts, see Feezell, 2017; McCombs, 2004.
37 In this context, Marx uses phrases such as “mirror the economic relation”, “merely the refection ...” and “only mirrors the
wretchedness of the real conditions in Germany”.
38 In Capital, Marx writes that “... (by) means of the value-relation, therefore, the natural form of commodity B becomes the
value-form of commodity A; in other words, the physical body of commodity B becomes a mirror for the value of commodity A,
in a footnote, he compares the process to how a person comes to see themselves reflected in others (cf. Lacan 1968; Rose,
1981:136-139; Wilden, 1908:29-30).

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how we interpret reality.
Returning to the representation of social class in myth, metaphysical discourses originate in the
realms beyond human influence. In the context of Critical Theory, what is absent from the discourses on
social class in television texts? By replacing formalist theories of communication39, replete with their
autonomous senders and receivers with a theory of communication as symbolic exchange (Wilden,
1980), new avenues of investigation open. The concept of scopophilia, a term used in psychology and
psychiatry to describe the aesthetic pleasure one receives from looking at someone or something has
relevance here. Seen in the light of Freud’s compulsion to repeat, even television’s continual program
repeats appear to be good business.
Audiences consume the cultural codes of television for pleasure. In this exchange, cultural codes
assume use values. Consequently, the systems of exchange values reproduce themselves, much later, in
conspicuous material consumption. In this process of communication exchange and the reproduction of
exchange values, television is a desired object in Lacan’s Imaginary. People exchange the immediate
pleasure gained from the narrative further down the track in a realization of desire.
The measure of the efficacy of this delayed value-exchange process is the material consumption of
society. For Marx, this ‘fetishism of consumption’ and the reproduction of the systems of value exchange,
creates confusion in people about the nature of the relationship between themselves and things. This
fetishism concept in Critical Theory includes the concept of cathexis – the discharging of an emotion
onto the other, derived in part from the primary processes of displacement, condensation and symbolism.
Baudrillard (1981) also writes about the fetishism of the narrative code and the possibility of a popular
consciousness ideologically coerced by the codes of capitalism.
6.3 MYTHIC ELEMENTS IN HUMOUR
The analysis of humour reveals many of the ideological effects of codes on audience identification. In
particular, the genre of satire exposes the subtle effects of these codes on how audiences perceive social
class. In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud studied humour as an important
academic pursuit and set out some of the basic mechanisms and motivations for joking. Pêcheux (1982)
also examines jokes (witz) and humour generally because these forms of language are one of the few
areas where ‘theoretical thought encounters the unconscious’. As a vehicle for political criticism, satire
supplies rich data concerning contemporary social classes.
Deconstructing humour to reveal its deeper political and ideological dimensions requires moving
beyond its nationalistic and parochial characteristics within the mediated discourse. Examining the ways
in which television texts treat the process of commodity production and the system of value exchange in
society reveals some of these embedded ideas. However, most studies on television humour is concerned
with the ensemble of social relations as they currently appear.
The mythic elements of humour arise from cognitive processes because the texts of most programs
hold contradictions that never surface or reach the audience. Signified sub-cultures, which bear no
necessary relation to a ‘true’ social class in the tradition of Critical Theory, quash these contradictions.
John Davies (1983a) suggests such contradictions are experienced as the ambivalences of humour; the
humour puts down someone else, while the audience, as spectators, remain in a position of relative
safety’.
At one level, television entertains and speaks directly to its audience, a collective entity. At another
level, it also speaks to the individual, which involves notions of ratings and economic viability. The latter
depends on significant audience penetration. Yet, at both levels, the process requires real people.
Participants in and consumers of the common cultures of television and social media are situated at the
intersection of the axes of identification and desire. However, because discourse has already constructed
its boundaries, individual members of the audience become subjects defined by the codes of capitalism
and commodity production.
39 See, for example, Berelson, 1952; Gerbner, 1972; Lasswell, 1948; McQuail, 1975:1-22; Smythe, 1972.

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7. MYTH IN TELEVISION SATIRE
7.1 A TOPOLOGY OF SATIRE
The foundations of a person’s understanding of social class derived from television programs are elusive
at best and significant differences exist between media constructions of social class and the audiences’
belief about these constructions. The model of literary satire developed by Peter Petro (1982) facilitates
exposing these differences. He defines the literary form as having two opposed qualities – criticism and
humour; the forms of criticism range from wit to black comedy with varying degree of censure. However,
some believe literary satire is very different in form to television satire and this creates an impasse
between the two. Barthes (1978) counters this form/content dichotomy with his three ordered
semiological system. Within the Critical Theory frame, the analysis seeks out the specific signifiers and
signifieds concerning social class within the genre.
Research in the 1980s in Australia suggests that television satire revolves around a dominant
opposition within the genre (Davies & Berrell, 1985). Humour results through the opposition of irony
and parody. Irony occurs when the intended meaning is opposite to the word/image signifier while parody
occurs when its form is opposite to the word/image signifier. Petro (1982) extends the work of
Markiewicz (1966) and names seven types of parody. One type, low burlesque was prominent among
British and Australia television comedy from 1960s to 1990s.
Popular Australian and UK comedy programs of the time, including Australia, You’re Standing for
It, While You’re Down There, The D Generation, The Paul Hogan Show, Kingswood Country, The Benny
Hills Show and Are You Being Served? characterized a lowbrow type of comedy. The current popularity
of the UK comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys suggests the form still has currency.
A distinguishing feature of literary parody is the metalinguistic use of performed language as a
vehicle of criticism (Rose, 1979). This feature exists in the theatre-restaurant format used by some
television comedies aimed at a mass audience. Generally, in Australia such programs had a predominance
of humour created by using previously broadcast referents in a wide range of television programs40. In
other words, those earlier signifieds in the text, labelled by Derrida as traces, become potential
metalinguistic vehicles for criticism of all kinds.
The use of incessant repetition of already broadcast referents in television programs has a theoretical
rationale in the Freudian notion of the desire to repeat. The reactivation of memory traces endows an
individual with a sense of security, reinforced in re-recognizing earlier experience, thus conferring on
the individual a sense of continuity and existence. This reiteration of self and place satisfies the desire to
repeat. The familiar patterns, routines, rituals and structures of television programs fulfil the compulsion
to repeat41. In 2019, the popularity of the UK reality program Gogglebox with US, Canadian and
Australian editions, seems to confirm the power of the desire to repeat. A mass audience watching people
watching and commenting on television programs that the viewing audience has already seen. Who
would have thought this pitch had legs? Alarmingly, it received a UK award from the Broadcasting Press
Guild for the “Best Factual Entertainment Programme”.
7.2 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SATIRE
Satire references contemporary life or past experiences and so, it has social, political and economic
dimensions. In a Critical Theory mode, three questions probe the sociology of satire:
1. Is the text partial toward a particular social class?
2. Who or what does the text ridicule?
3. Who or what mounts the criticism?
The answers to questions of this type reveal the net ideological effect of myth in television satire.
During the 1980s, the form/content dichotomy impelled the parochialism at the heart of Australian
television comedy (Davies & Berrell, 1985). While programs with exaggerated parody achieve a measure
of popularity and commercial success during the 1960s and 1970s, during the 1980s, the ritualistic
formatted theatre-restaurant television comedy also increased in popularity. This format offered a
40 A cursory review of three episodes of the four Australian television programs reveal hundreds of previously broadcast
television referents related to advertisements, newspapers, television shows, movies, actors, personalities, politicians, people in
business, sporting personalities, celebrities as well as places and events.
41 For example, younger children love to hear the same story repeated over and over.

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convenient platform to answers to the above questions in a textual analysis of a typical episode in each
of the programs Australia, You’re Standing in It [AS] and While You’re Down There [WD].
The roots of theatre-restaurant television comedy are vaudevillian, while the content owes an
allegiance to literary satire. Using Barthes’ model of signification avoids the binary structure of form and
content, prevalent in the study of literary texts. Irony as a second order signification system comes from
parody at the first order. The first order of signification correlates with the generalities of the programs,
such as the use of low burlesque in parody.
Figure 6. A Model of Parody
1st Order
Generalities [opposite to]
2nd
Order
Particularities
The low burlesque format in satire, however, is insufficient to support the humour. Accordingly, irony
and wordplay keep the pace of the comedy segments. Barthes’ system for metalanguage reveals the
process by which the criticism in the text flows back to referents in the real world. The chains of second
order connotations are different for each sketch in both AS and WD.
Nevertheless, the textual criticism relies on the first order parody - between the signified in the sketch
and the mental images or signified in the form of Derrida’s traces of referents in the real world. To assess
the efficacy of television, the universe of discourses the include the audience at the third level of
signification, represented in the figure below (Barthes, 1973, 1978).
Figure 7. Metalanguage in Satire
1ST Order
General
[ opposite to]
2nd
Order
Meta-language
3rd
Order
Connotation
The rhetoric of satire battles with ideologies present in the minds of the audience (signifiers II in Figure
7). At this level, the parody in satire points to the battle over interpretation. The result is a new ideology,
signalled by the necessary struggle in the reader’s mind about meaning in the real world. This battle over
interpretation, in Lacan’s view, occurs in the domain of the Imaginary, which presents the viewer with a
dilemma. Often, these traces consist of isolated realities, massively overlayed with fictional images42.
42 One classic example where our continued knowledge of the real depends heavily on images disseminated by the mass media
is knowledge about the crack UK Regiment, the Special Air Services’ [SAS] assault on the Iranian Embassy on 30 April to 5
May in 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, London (see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAejENocQB0). The images of this single siege have appeared regularly in television
Signifier Signified
Irony: meaning is opposite to signifier
Signifier Signified
Form of behaviour opposite to references in reality; e.g.
slapstick versus serious
SIGN I
SIGN II
Meaning is opposite to
expression
Signified is opposite to signifier
Signifier Signified
SIGN OF IRONY
Signifier Signified
RHETORIC IDEOLOGY
SIGN OF PARODY

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While rhetoric and ideology combine to deliver specific messages in television programs, satire is
political in nature. In this context, Critical Theory ask whether satiric texts offer oppositional readings to
the dominant codes of capitalism embedded deep within the texts of many television programs.
7.2 MYTH AND SATIRE
Habermas (1978) suggests no single ideology dominates capitalism in modern times. There are,
nevertheless, certain feature in the codes of capitalism that make the system appear eternal. Marx had no
doubt that the class-based system of his day exploited the work of one class for the benefit of another.
The work of ideology made capitalism’s salient features natural consequences of the political economy
of his day.
While the criticisms emanating from AS and WD have no noticeable social class bias, there are
nonetheless, mythic signifiers of social class. This process promotes a false identification among viewers
concerning the definition of a social class. The signifiers in each comedy segment provides the audience
with enough information to associate performers within well-defined social values and/or political
affiliations. These characterisations are normally stereotypic and include the obvious denotations of age,
gender, physical status and/or dress, chosen for specific reasons. For example, to signal power, authority,
status, social class, conformity and/or rebellious youth. Military personnel, for example, appearing a WD
sketch belong to the US Marine Corps by virtue of linguistic and dress codes that signify referents in the
real world. Concerning the latter characterization, actors comment on US foreign policy. In AS, the
characters known as the Dodgy Brothers are shady salesman who have questionable moral principles and
dubious business practices.
In a Critical Theory context, the identification the social class locations (defined in section 1.4 above)
of characters in a typical episode of AS and WD is possible. However, similar characters and social
classes exists in most television comedies in the vaudeville or theatre-restaurant tradition. The social
class location of the characters appears in Table 3 below.
Although the classifications and description are subjective, in the programs, no criticism emanates
from characters that are members of Marx’s polar classes. This absence is not a deliberate strategy on
the part of the program’s producers; rather, it is an effect of language, which reflect the dominant social
practices of society.
Table 3. Social Class Locations of Characters
WD MODERN
DESCRIPTION
TECHNICAL
DESCRIPTION
AS MODERN
DESCRIPTION
TECHNICAL
DESCRIPTION
Parents not obvious - Tim and Debbie new middle
class (radical
and intellectual
sub-culture)
new petit
bourgeois –
surplus class
US marine new working class new petit bourgeois -
surplus class
Teachers new middle
class
new petit
bourgeois –
surplus class
Child - of new petit bourgeois
parents
Dodgy brothers self-employed
with
questionable
moral principles
(lower end of
the new middle
class)
petit bourgeois
Oenologist new middle class new petit bourgeois –
surplus class
Politician upper middle
class but
aligned with the
established
order
new bourgeois
Stand-up
comic
self-employed (new
middle class)
petit bourgeois Senior
administrator
middle class but
aligned with the
established
order
new petit
bourgeois
documentaries over some 40 years when the SAS is the subject of treatment by the media. Other examples include laser guided
missile strikes in the Iraq war, aspects of the 9/11 tragedy and the sinking of the SS Titanic.

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Lawyer self-employed (new
middle class)
petit bourgeois –
surplus class
Professional
sportsperson
(not a super star)
self-employed
(new middle
class)
petit bourgeois
Judge upper class figure
aligned with the
established order
new bourgeois Drunk derelict,
possibly
homeless
lumpenproletariat
Fashion
designer
self-employed (new
middle class)
petit bourgeois
Young
female
not obvious -
So much of the material on television is “filtered through social assumptions” and braced by “latent social
images and stereotypes” (Hall, 1967). Even so, one enduring assumption shining through the texts of
most television programs is that economic production is independent of the work of actual people. In
turn, this underpins the fetishism of commodity production and the avarice of the advertising industry.
The various codes within each comedy segment allow the audience to place actors and objects of
criticism within a well-defined social or institutional category, seen below in a typical program.
Table 4. Subjects and Objects of Criticism
WD MODERN
DESCRIPTION
AS MODERN DESCRIPTION
Politicians petit bourgeois - upper class figures
aligned with the established order
Politicians petit bourgeois - upper class figures
Hippies lumpenproletariat Students new middle class
Ski crowd combination but portrayed as new middle
(or surplus) class and/or new bourgeois
Models self-employed but represented as
new middle class
Legal professionals new middle class Teachers new middle class
Fashion designers self-employed new middle class Actors self-employed but clearly new middle
class
Judges petit bourgeois - upper class figures
Interviewers new middle class
Wine enthusiast
(pretentious)
new middle class Salesman new middle class
Yuppies (young,
upwardly mobile
couples)
new middle class Entrepreneurs new middle class, possibly self-
employed
News readers new middle class Sporting
personalities
new middle class
Again, conspicuous in their absence are Marx’s polar classes. As a mode of economic production,
capitalism appears fleetingly in the background as a stage prop or background scenery for the comedy
segments.
Even if the language of the comedic texts had neutral and unbiased representations, bias would
nevertheless exist at a meta-level beyond the text. The structure and system of television, for example,
supports an order of things without ever openly recognizing the referents to this order. Humphrey
McQueen (1977) records that ‘the mass media does not support big business, they are big business’. He
would likely hold similar views today about Facebook and Twitter.
A cursory review of some of the props and scenery used in the segments appear in Table 5.

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Table 5. Examples of Referents of Contemporary Capitalism
WD AS
various corporations Westpac bank
real estate industry wine industry
motor vehicle dealerships snow fields and associated industries
the mass media fashion industry
cosmetics the mass media
Without facing any criticism, the entire edifice of capitalism appears as things that are, a representation
that masks the role of people in producing a surplus far exceeding any necessary economic requirement
(Gorz, 1982). Yet, capitalism requires conspicuous consumption as a requisite part of the system. Has
consumerism usurped the notion of class conflict in the politics of contemporary society? (Kellner, 1984).
Both WD and AS have a predominance of irony; that is, a prevalence of signs in which meaning is
opposite to expression or the word/image signifier. But the position from which this metalanguage
comments is not a clearly defined class value system. In fact, the class system is always missing, alluding
the unwariness of the audience and their capability to penetrate this complex social construction (cf.
Berger & Luckman, 1975). The dominant social construction is a middle-class sub-culture in the case
the comedy in either WD or AS.
Media constructions like a radical intellectual youth culture (Tim and Debbie) or the shady
marketeers/businesspeople (the Dodgy Brothers) are all mythic signifiers, represented in Figure 8.
Figure 8. Mythic Signifiers in Satire
1ST Order
General
[ opposite to]
2nd Order
Meta-language
3rd
Order
Connotation
The net ideological effect of the mythic constructions in the comedy fails to restrain the potential for
the humour to address the influence of social class on society. The narratives do not offer a platform for
the audience to act; it become rhetoric without a serious sub text. John Davies (1983a) described the
process as “bombastic oratory”. In a Critical Theory framework, evidence of the fundamental
antagonisms of capital and labour (particularly the workforce that directly produces surplus value)
appears only sporadically, if at all. The potential of satire in shows like WD and AS reduces to an
insidious mythic construction, which makes scant mention of marginalised workers, social inequality,
poverty or the differential wage structures that drive the contemporary economy. And the notion of a
working class is simply absent. Labour power in the real world disappears. Nicos Poulantzas’ (1982)
idea about ideology operating at two distinct level – one to separate and one to unite – is useful in
Signifier Signified
SIGN OF IRONY
Signifier Signified
RHETORIC IDEOLOGY
SIGN OF PARODY
MYTHS of
Radical intellectual youth culture
(in Tim and Debbie in AS)
Entrepreneurial enterprise
(in the Dodgy Brothers in AS)
Wine enthusiast
(in the pretentious middle class in
WD)
CONTEMPORARY
ORDER OF THINGS
Capitalism
(prop, scenery and
background)

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understanding the comedy in either WD or AS. It works to unite us as members of an audience and
separate us as individual consumers.
The language and the images of satire mediate a mirror image of the reality of capitalism as a mode
of economic production. The television comedy of WD and AS reflects this reality as a desired object of
Lacan’s Imaginary. In this domain, signifiers in the real world manipulate the Imaginary’s false sense of
being into a coherent rationalization of the Real world. However, as Wilden (1980) points out, Lacan’s
Imaginary is not in the least bit imaginary; it is a mirror of society, a realm of images, doubles, mirrors
and specular identification, all choreographed by the Symbolic’s incursion into the signifying chain. The
specularity of the Imaginary makes audience identification a chimera at best.
According to Theodor Adorno, the mediation of images of social class is an integral part of the covert
meaning embedded in systems of mass communication (Adorno et al., 2005). This mediation also speaks
to the nature of power and control. The mythic signifiers of social class in the mass media invert the true
nature of a class in the minds of Critical Theorists.

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8. MINDING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
8.1 TELEVISION IN THE SUBURBS
Locating the symbolic systems that support a narrative structure is a road to uncovering the ideology of
television texts. However, relations appearing at a surface find added meaning at a society’s deep
structure. In everyday life, the immediate social institutions have a profound effect on how people live
their daily lives. Television and social media are also vehicles that significantly shape our worldview.
Chamberlain (1983) suggests that most people possess a basic understanding of the nature of class
and the types of class-based inequalities prevalent in society today. However, people gain this
understanding synecdochally and once these various images merge, the possibility of articulating a
consistent discourse on social class fades. A person’s subjective knowledge derived from their personal
interactions with people perceived to belong to a particular social class coalesce, producing an objective
assessment about the general structure and nature of a social class. From a Critical Theory viewpoint,
this class-based knowledge stems from faulty reasoning and distorts the nature of a social class.
Moreover, in this process, people tend to conceptualise class according to broad socio-economic
categories, such as working, middle and upper class.
Audiences place actors in television programs into similar board categories by virtue of the possession
of the symbols of success, or lack thereof, or by referring to a broadly defined occupational group (cf.
Daniel, 1983). This process masks the political, economic and social consequences of a person’s
attachment to a specific social class or faction.
To measure the extent to which television audiences generalize about social class, the original study
employed a convenience sample of television viewers in three Melbourne residential suburbs, which at
the time were loosely described as being working, middle or upper class based suburb (based on the
socio-economic indicators of the time). Participants named the class location of several prominent
characters in recently broadcast and highly popular television programs, which included The Paul Hogan
Show43 (and its associated specials) and the UK comedy-drama Minder44. The survey asked those people
who identified themselves as being “somewhat familiar” with the characters and programs questions
about the social class discourses mediated in these programs. While the ephemeral nature of television
makes it difficult to arrive at any conclusive statements about what exactly audiences think about the
nature of social class, the responses nevertheless suggest a bias in audience identification concerning
social class worthy of greater scrutiny.
8.2 PAUL HOGAN, OZCUT AND SOCIAL CLASS
The analysis of social class discourse occurs at a level of generality. It is based on the class positions
occupied most often by the main actors in the program. In the case of The Paul Hogan Show, ‘Hoges’ is
one of the better-known characters, an archetype of a Sydney refuse collector. While he is a member of
the surplus class, he is at the lower rung of the workers who service capitalism. A Marxist interpretation
of class removes Hoges from any direct involvement in the mode of economic production.
The media’s appropriation of Hoges is a construction termed Ozcult — the raising of popular male
Australian working-class wisdom to the status of an art form (Davies & Berrell, 1985). Arguably, this
construction looks for a ‘working class’ audience. Ozcult’s discourse combines sardonic wit, a distain
for authority and a fierce independence with overt egalitarianism. These traits are those of a vulgarized
43 ‘This popular Australian comedy (1973-1984) made Hogan a star (he subsequently starred in the blockbuster movie Crocodile
Dundee. John Cornell appeared in the show as Hogan's dim-witted flatmate Strop. A series of sketches, usually with Hogan in the
lead role, included the following characters: Leo Wanker: an inept daredevil stuntman; George Fungus: a take-off of real-life
television journalist George Negus of the Australian 60 Minutes; Super Dag: an ocker superhero complete with terry-towelling
hat and zinc-creamed nose, his powers include his ability to use his esky in innovative ways; Perce the Wino: an old drunk who
starred in a series of silent, Benny Hill-style, sketches; Donger: variants of this beer-gutted character include Sgt Donger, the
tough cop with a bionic beer-gut and Arthur Dunger, a caricature of the suburban tinny-chugging Australian male. Nigel
Lovelace was a skateboarding eleven-year-old. The Phantom was a parody of the famous comic book hero The Phantom’
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paul_Hogan_Show).
44 ‘A highly popular British comedy-drama about the London criminal underworld. The original show ran for 10 series between
1979-1994. At its peak it was one of ITV's biggest ratings winners. Such was the popularity of the show that in 2008, an
announcement suggested Minder would go into production for broadcast in 2009. The series began broadcast in February 2009.
In 2010, it was announced that no further episodes would be made following lukewarm reception to the first series’ (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minder_(TV_series)).

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lower middle- or working-class male, colloquially referred to as an ‘ocker’45. The ocker is extremely
loyal to his sport and his mates (close friends) while simultaneously being condescending toward women.
He sees people belonging to either the middle or upper classes as non-entities. Work and politics are
necessary evils and treated with contempt.
If Ozcult’s audience is working-class, then bias which exists in audience identification of social class
should surface in how people perceive social class in The Paul Hogan Show. Working class viewers
might interpret Hoges as a popular figure reflecting what they consider as their values and traits. Middle
and/or upper-class audiences might see similar values and traits as part of a working-class discourse. The
process of identification would lead to a stronger identification with Hoges among working class
audiences. However, middle- and upper-class audiences would tend to identify less strongly with the
Ozcult construction. The analysis of social class viewing habits would likely reveal differences in
audience identification.
Table 6. Class Viewing Habits - The Paul Hogan Show
Upper class audience (n=66) Middle class audience (n=61) Working class audience (n=60)
Reg some never* Reg some never Reg some never
14 14 36 23 23 16 30 20 10
Answer to the question: Do you regularly/sometime/never watch The Paul Hogan Show and its various specials?
* includes those who watched a program but were quite unfamiliar with format and characters
Table 7. Audience Identification of Class Position - Paul Hogan
UC MC WC other UC MC WC other UC MC WC other
0 10 77 13 0 18 73 9 0 4 85 11
Answer to the question: Would you describe the character of Hoges as being upper class [UC] / middle class [MC] / class working
class [WC] / other class [other]; question only asked to those people (above in Table 6) who said they regularly/sometimes
watched the program; Shown as a percentage of those respondents
The audience’s identification of the class location of the main character suggests that ideological
processes are at work in the text. In this context, what does the media construction of Hoges represent
and what discourses underpin this representation?
Paul Hogan’s humour finds expression within the contemporary discourses of modern capitalism. For
Hogan, a feature of his comedy is the use of irony, but what is the sign of irony? For Barthes, it is the
signifier of myth. Ozcult is the discourse of a specific Australian sub-culture; in its simplest description,
Hoges’ irony signifies an Australian working-class culture (Figure 9).
On the one hand, the character of Hoges stands for one group in society criticising other groups. On
the other hand, Hoges, by metonymy, is a specific sub-culture within Australian society. This sub-culture
– the ocker, is not a real class so it difficult to figure out who or what comes under criticism. For example,
is the audiences’ identification with Ozcult being criticised or the actual object of criticism in the sketch?
Does the audience see Ozcult as a constructed myth, a false representation of what could be a genuine
working-class position? Or does it laugh with Ozcult at pedestrian middle class values, elitism, television
programs and/or upper-class pretentiousness?
As a mythic signifier, Hoges’ humour is emptied of any social class value system. What stays with
the audience is ridicule, the point at which satire and humour intersect (Petro, 1982). This why the satire
in The Paul Hogan Show is humour rather than social or political criticism (Davies, 1983a).
45 ‘From 1916 onward, "Ocker" was a nickname for anyone called Oscar. The 1920s Australian comic strip Ginger Meggs had a
character called Oscar ("Ocker") Stevens. The term "ocker" for a stereotypically uncouth Australian came into use when a
character of that name, played by Ron Frazer, appeared in the satirical television comedy series The Mavis Bramston Show’
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocker).

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Figure 9. Irony as a Mythic Signifier
1ST Order
Language
2nd Order
Meta-language
3rd Order
Connotation
8.3 MINDING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
In the UK television series Minder, the main characters are Terry McCann46, a gig worker and Arthur
Daley, a businessman and entrepreneur. Terry is Arthur Daley’s minder, an occasional bodyguard and
hired help. Arthur has few overheads and employs Terry on a contract basis, for cash under the table but
only when work is available.
Occasionally, Terry joins the ranks of the entrepreneurs, a petit bourgeois, who sometimes engages
in some commercial activities with his boss. The character of Arthur Daley is clearly an entrepreneur,
taking part in many small business dealings and schemes, following the principle of ‘buy cheap and sell
quickly at a profit’. Terry’s social class position is unclear while Arthur’s is clearly petit bourgeoise.
Humour within each episode arises from the circumstances in which the principal characters find
themselves. However, while the audience passes through language to reach pleasure through the text,
many contradictions within the text fail to reach the audience. Most of the characters in Minder present
as working class. The survey in the original project found that while most people name Terry McCann
as working class, Arthur Daley’s was harder to place in a social class.
Table 8. Class Viewing Habits - Minder
Reg some never* Reg some never Reg some never
14 11 41 23 12 26 8 6 46
Answer to the question: Do you regularly/sometime/never watch Minder?
* includes those who watched a program but were quite unfamiliar with format and characters
Table 9. Audience Identification of Class Positions - Minder
UC MC WC other UC MC WC other UC MC WC other
McCann 0 3 79 18 3 13 70 13 0 10 74 16
Daley 5 52 10 32 27 25 20 29 52 20 0 27
Answer to the question: Would you describe the characters of McCann and Daley as being upper class -UC /middle class - MC
/working class - WC / other - other class or don’t know; Question asked of those people (in Table 8) who said they regularly or
sometimes watched the program(s); Shown as a percentage of those respondents
The audience see Terry as working class within a functional interpretation of social class. However, even
if this were correct, this is the point at which the class construction collapses. The audience never know
46 Traces of the character Terry McCann in Minder resurface decades later in the crime/drama series New Tricks (BBC
Television). The actor Dennis Waterman played the characters of Terry McCann in Minder and plays Gerry Standing in New
Tricks. Both characters have similar attributes, mannerisms and life experiences.
Signifier Signified
Signifier Signified
SIGN OF IRONY
MTH OF OZCULT
Signifier
IDEOLOGY (of a working-class sub-culture)
Signified

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the discourses underpinning the common interests of the characters of Minder as members of any social
class. Although individual episodes contain fleeting references to Terry’s ‘birds’47, Arthur’s ‘in-doors’48
or the shenanigans of the punters at the Winchester Club (the licensed premises that the characters of
Minder frequent), for most episodes, characters live out their lives in an insular world.
Putting Arthur into a social class depends on the class location of the viewer. Middle class viewers
do not see Arthur as working class. Most upper-class viewers see him belonging to either the middle or
another type of social class. Many working-class viewers see Arthur as a member of the upper class,
which he clearly is not.
While viewers generally perceive Terry as working class, Arthur’s class position is less well defined.
Upper class viewers do not recognize Arthur’s values and traits as theirs. Working class viewers are
uncertain concerning Arthur’s social class position while middle class viewers are more generous
concerning Arthur’s. These wide distributions occur because the discourses within television programs
such as Minder, rarely touch on the real contradictions experienced by people in everyday life.
The world of Minder is one without family, close friends, income tax and institutions save the
occasional brush with the legal system and the police. Minder is a world without any conviction to any
cause apart from one’s self-advancement.
Perhaps the predominantly middle-class viewer of Minder is content to simply slide in between the
signs of economic and social success (typified in Arthur’s prestige Jaguar car and Terry’s sexual success).
For Davies (1983b), the popularity of Minder is partly due to the portrayal of a world where social class
no longer matters. Here, both good and bad are determined compared to a person’s individual actions
within a classless social structure. Davis (1983b) further suggests that what Terry minds in Minder is not
Arthur Daley but our consciousness of others and ourselves. Moreover, despite being highly entertaining,
the ideological effect of Minder is also to remove from sight the consciousness of an industrial working
class, a class that is generally absent from most television discourses.
8.4 MYTH AND SOCIAL CLASS
The egalitarian myth perpetuated by Ozcult and the idea of classlessness in Minder is based on a belief
that somehow, Australia is a classless society or at least something that approximates this ideal. Within
a Critical Theory perspective, both The Paul Hogan Show and Minder have dominant characters that
generally occupy a “contradictory class location” (Wright, 1978, 1979). The character of Hoges appears
to have more exposure among middle class viewers that either upper- or working-class viewers. The
character of Terry McCann has more exposure among middle class viewers that either lower- or working-
class viewers. In the case of Paul Hogan, the regular publicity he received in the Australian and
international media ensures that many viewers would know his name even if they have not watched any
of his television programs or movies. His popularity continues to this day49.
Hogan’s incarnation as Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee I and II, suggests that Ozcult is a media
construction aimed at working class audiences. The character of Hoges in The Paul Hogan Show needed
to undergo a radical transformation from an ‘ocker’ to a wise bushman from the Australian outback to
appeal to a wider international audience. Where the potential audience is middle class, as is the case with
the Australian audience segment for Crocodile Dundee I, this audience would dismiss Hoges’ character
as vulgar, bigoted and chauvinistic. The transformation of Hoges into Crocodile Dundee creates a new
myth to appeal to the middle class, that of the noble savage, Mick Dundee.
However, within Ozcult, Hoges criticizes a range of objects and people using referents drawn for the
wider society. The agency of this criticism, the archetype of a Sydney garbage man, is a less well-defined
social class position. The characters of Terry McCann and Arthur Daley in Minder belong to a
contradictory class location within a Critical Theory interpretation. The representations of the social class
position of characters in many television programs and movies never reach the audience because
ideology distorts the identification process. Both The Paul Hogan Show and Minder remain impervious
to the social class contradictions inherent in everyday life when one reads these texts as realist texts.
MacCabe’s (1974) assessment of realist texts hold some sway here. In the context of literature, he
finds the reader of the classical realist text in a position where a dominant ideology resolves any
47 Slang or jargon for young women (www.urbandictionsry.com).
48 The wife as referred to by her husband to his friends; popularized by Arthur Daley in British TV series Minder
(www.urbandictionsry.com).
49 In 2019, as part of the Australian Stories series, the ABC broadcast a two-part in-depth report (A Fortunate Life) about his life
and career. Segments included clips from the Paul Hogan Show and Crocodile Dundee. (https://www.abc.net.au/austory/a-
fortunate-life---part-1/11505028).

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contradictions. These texts do not articulate the real world but rather set up the order of things. Like Marx
and Engels, MacCabe proffers that realist texts create false hierarchies, which never articulate the ‘real’
as being contradictory. Extending this argument to television texts, the audience sits in a “relation of
dominant specularity” to these texts.
The humour in either The Paul Hogan Show or Minder does not move beyond imaginary relationships
and associations and their discourses are rooted firmly in the foundations that support contemporary
social order. This make it impossible for these programs to signify any contrary positions or discourses
that might cause an audience to question the status quo. In general, television humour, critical as it
appears on the surface is rather impotent criticism because it is substantially composed of mythic
signifiers, which work to displace many social, economic and political contradictions in everyday life.
In short, in Minder, Arthur’s Jaguar car and Terry’s birds remind the viewer that capitalism is the best
mode of economic production.
Roland Barthes semiology is one way of theorizing the relationship between myth and its
ideologically effect50. Barthes (1973) shows that behind all mythic constructions is the real practice of
ideology — he suggests the end goal of myth is “immobilize the world: (myths) must suggest and mimic
a universal order which has fixated once and for all the hierarchy of possessions”. Therefore, myth
inhibits people daily. For the consumer of the common culture of capitalism, the specularity that braces
Lacan’s Imaginary turns the inconsequential utterances of television characters like Hoges, Terry
McCann and Arthur Daley into mythic signifiers. With such utterances, capitalism appears everlasting.
8.5 FAREWELL TELEVISION’S WORKING CLASS
Marx’s industrial working class, the proletariat, is shrinking rapidly in the modern world. This
seemingly irreversible trend has implications for social and political theory and how people conceive of
social classes. Marx's envisaged future for humankind was one characterised by equality, opportunity,
the removal of private property in production and importance of use-values as the preeminent measure
of social and economic worth. He thought the new society under these conditions would somehow be
classless. However, studies in social psychology suggests people will always seek to differentiate
themselves from others in one way or another, even in a purely egalitarian society. Perhaps individualism
is an ingrained part of the human condition?
The passing parade of youth sub-cultures since the 1950s — hippies, mods, rockers, punks, Goths,
surfies and so forth, and the influence of the generational categories — baby boomers, millennials and
the like, reinforce this view. Moreover, a highly conformist and unvarying society shouts of an Orwellian
future. Today, Leftist ideas of social class have moved well beyond Marx’s classic understanding of class
even though Marx himself contemplated the rapid rise of the new middle class in Grundrisse and the
effect this development would have on society and ideas about social class. That Marx failed
simultaneously to move past the political implications of this shift is a significant stumbling block for
the Left.
Ralf Dahrendorf (1959) thought people connect with one another by common elements in their daily
lives, through personal, social and cultural similarities rather than by ties established by the work they
do. These similarities also filter down through the work and organizational groupings. The social
commentator Alvin Toffler (1990) hit the nail on the head concerning social class. He suggested the
industrial proletariat - the class that once held the key to an alternative future according to Marx had
evolved into a “cognitariat”. This cognitariat interacts more with one another and symbols than they do
with the processes that directly produce tangibles (Callinicos, 1982). Clearly, the structure of social
relations built around the traditional production line waned because of the irreversible shift to service
sector employment in the 1960s and 1970s (Bell, 1975b; Machlup, 1962), which reached full swing in
today’s “super-symbolic” society (Toffler, 1990). The contradictory class locations mooted by Erik Olin
Wright seem the norm today.
If the mass media reflect aspects of society and ideology works to mask the essential features of
capitalism, then a similar masking should also appear in the content of television programs and social
media. Finding members of the classical working class on television today is the exception rather than
the rule. While identity politics has a long history, social media on both sides of the political divide today,
appears to thrive on identity politics and outrage (Fukuyama 2018a, 2018b; Lee, 2017; Urban, 2018;
Wiarda, 2014). Personal identity rather than social class is in the driver’s seat today. What better ways
to mask how social class impacts politics, economics and society than by highlighting things that separate
us rather than commend those things that unite us in our best interests?
50 Other ways include Nichols (1981, pp. 76-77, 97-98) and Wilden (1980, pp. 10-12).

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9. CODA: LIMITS TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
9.1 IMAGINARY AND REAL RELATIONSHIPS IN SOCIETY AND IN MYTH
The application of Barthes’ three-ordered semiological system to the study of myth reveals some salient
ideological dimensions contained in discourses on social class. In the sample text Er, the narrative
reinforces a social structure based on a class specific set of attributes and values. However, the third order
of signification reveals this structure where the preferred choices of the Souls leads to assured happiness
in life. This order legitimizes the fundamental power relationships of ultimate authority and Kingship,
founded on the exploitation of labour power, manifested in the real world as the social class structure of
ancient Greece (de Ste. Croix, 1981).
In contemporary society, satiric texts in the sample television programs create false signifiers of social
class, which causes labour power to evaporate. In satire, various relations within the capitalist mode of
economic production are targets of criticism; yet, neither the genuine working class nor the bourgeoisie
seem to make any contribution to the economy. Rather, a fetishism of commodities replaces labour power
and reduces the relationships between people to relationships between things. In television programs like
The Paul Hogan Show and Minder, audiences see actors portraying working class people, when Critical
Theory suggests this identification is far from certain. The signified in these programs is a pseudo
working class culture, which bears little resemblance to the marginalized workers engaged directly in
economic production. However, with the disappearance of the working class in television programs,
describing the landscape of today’s social classes is a complicated and confusing undertaking.
In a Critical Theory perspective, the works of Michal Foucault, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida,
Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan bolstered the argument for the influence of myth on shaping a person’s
views concerning the political, economic and social order of things. In the context of textual analysis,
these ideas helped challenge the conventional expectations of the authorial text and open it to new
interpretations beyond orthodox and normative ones (Culler, 1983a; Eagleton, 1983; Ray, 1984; Rossi,
1983; Sturrock, 1979).
Despite criticisms aimed at some of the above thinkers, their salient ideas expanded the boundaries
of textual analysis. Despite offering no discernible change platform in his work, the way Foucault
undertook discourse analysis is quite unique, even though the process ends up with him substituting one
discourse with another (for example, sexuality with power; power with desire and so forth). Nevertheless,
he moves textual analysis from subject to discourse and opens it to the world of ideology. Here, we can
relate one episteme to another in historical contexts, but Foucault’s intent pales in comparison to the size
and complexities of the things he describes; without a theory of ideology, no discourse is dominant in
his eyes.
The rationale behind Levi-Strauss’ method has an epistemological basis, as Sturrock (1979) suggests.
Levi-Strauss does not reject other interpretations of myth’; rather, he leaves the door open for alternative
accounts. However, Levi-Strauss sees little difference between his path and the alternative paths others
offer. This entails interpreting cultural transformations by engaging a cognitive process, which structures
the signifieds in a matrix of binary oppositions. Levi-Strauss suggests all such interpretations mirror the
very structures of human cognition – the epistemological foundations of his work rest on universalistic
principles. While a Levi-Straussian reading of a text reveals a plurality of meanings, his epistemology
favours psychological-based explanations. If any ideology exists in Levi-Strauss’ interpretation of myth,
it is a mere refection of the fundamental binary oppositions governing cultural transformations.
Barthes contribution to understanding the nature of myth shines through as a method. He urges people
to read texts rather than authors. Reading texts bypasses authorial intent in a move to discover ideologies
embedded at the deep level. While his approach is basically structuralist (Culler 1983b), his positioning
of ideology at the third level of signification open new avenues of explicating the meaning of myth.
However, Barthes is not an ideologue in the Critical Theory sense because he is more concerned with
cultural rather than political exploitation – the lack of an ideological conviction in his work makes him
a chameleon in political landscapes (Sturrock, 1979).
The role of language as a cultural mediator is significant in textual analysis (cf. Baudrillard, 1981;
Lyotard, 1986; Pêcheux, 1982; Vološinov, 1973). Behind every signifier is a metanarrative or a meta-
discourse that provides the signifier with its rationale. That is, ideological practices in the real world
brace every sign. These propositions sit well within a Critical Theory perspective but such as assessment
is not the concern of either Jacques Derrida or Jacques Lacan. Both are parochial in the extreme51. Both
51 In the case of Lacan, his intellectual arrogance was legendary (Schneiderman, 1983).

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thinkers, nevertheless, share a common intellectual thread with an emphasis placed on the process of
language in the interpretation of meaning. Nonetheless, if language and ideology are two side of the same
coin as Vološinov suggests, then some of the ideas articulated by Derrida and Lacan bolster Critical
Theory. While Derrida’s notion of a void in signification reduces his contribution to textual analysis to
methodological considerations, Lacan’s work shifts psychoanalytic understandings from the primordial
to the real world of language. Lacan’s unconscious mimics the structure of language (Lacan, 1977). This
proposition points to the importance of concepts such as metaphor and metonymy in language and the
influence these have in conscious and unconscious motivation. The move to a Lacanian influenced
Critical Theory in textual analysis gives traditional psychoanalytic interpretations of a text a materialistic
base.
Because language mediates a certain condition of existence for the receiver, Lacan suggests this
process interpolates people as subjects of a discourse rather than autonomous individuals within a
discourse. MacCabe (1981) too notes that discourse constructs and defines the individual within the limits
set by ‘that’ specific discourse. At this juncture, Lacan’s contribution to Critical Theory is clear.
Extending Lacan’s topography of the unconscious – the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary triad, to
the real world of social relations supplies a way to see Marx’s theory of exchange values as an imaginary
relation in its Lacanian sense. As Wilden (1980) notes, the importance of this extension of Lacan’s
topography is evident when Marx’s fetishism of commodities results from Imaginary relations52.
Within the symbolic economic structures of capitalism, Lacan’s subject is both a singular and insular
entity. In a Critical Theory worldview, the individual is reduced to this blinkered state as the direct result
of capitalism’s mode of economic production, a mode based on the exploitation of the labour of one class
by another, which magnifies the deceptive effects of surplus value and private ownership of the means
of production have on society. Relationships between people reduce to relationships between things.
People live outside the shared experiences of not only the real world but also of Lacan’s realm of the
Real. There is little possibility of entering the shared discourses of the Symbolic. Consequently, people
live out their lives in an imaginary world, insidiously corrupted by the false permanencies of Imaginary
relationships.
In Lacan’s view, the Symbolic realm of similarities and differences invades the Imaginary’s either/or
domain and gives it direction. In the real world of capitalism, the economic system (constituted of
symbolic relationships) bends to the theories of exchange values, which coerce people into action. Marx’s
notion of the “dull compulsions of economic relations” hold sway. As Wilden (1980) contends, the
ideologies of capitalism influence how people live their lives. Imaginary relations are predominant the
contemporary world. In the context of textual analysis of myth, ideology is certainly an imaginary
relation, which misleadingly supplies the rationale for the order of things and way things are.
9.2 THE MYTH OF CAPITALISM
The world of myth is essentially political with economic and social overtones. In modern Western
society, contemporary capitalism includes of a combination of laws, different shades of the same mode
of economic production and institutions that regulate daily life. Ideology translates the rhetoric of
capitalism into universal truths. In a similar view, the texts of antiquity reinforced the then order of things.
Despite the presence of corporatist discourses suggesting a balance of competing interests in
contemporary society (Grant, 1985; Winkler, 1977), many messages about politics, economics and
society disseminated today through the agencies of television, newspapers, radio and the ubiquitous
social media platforms are demonstrably contradictory. Traces of earlier signifieds morph into new
signifiers in the minds of the audiences of mass media. Many such traces are highly ideological and may
confirm or contradict already stored knowledge and/or lived experiences. For example, the mythologies
in the Myth of Er, Minder and The Paul Hogan Show tell their audience stories that subtly reinforce the
legitimacy of the political, economic and social order of the day. These stories encourage people to
subsist in an Imaginary world, where dominant discourses and ideological processes support the status
quo.
However, Critical Theory suggests people also have the inherent ability reflect critically on their
situation and single out the intimidating and limiting forces that stifle human potential and social
development. In this mindset, interests of social “emancipation” take hold, following the pathway
suggested by Habermas. Nevertheless, there are still obstacles on the road to overcome. If the universe
of memory traces of past phenomena influence meaning through the matrix of ‘graven images’ in our
unconscious (Davies, 1988), then the signs of any alternative future will have the signs of capitalism to
battle with.
52 Wilden uses a lower case “i” but an upper case “I” also seems appropriate here.

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APPENDIX A
Brief examples of Barthes five codes in Er (some parts of the text relate to more than one code).
Hermeneutic (meaning in a text that is present but hidden)
Thamyris’ transcendence from a bard to a nightingale, motivated by an unconscious desire for a
musical life, reinforces to supreme status of music in the culture and society of Greece in antiquity; the
juxtaposition of realist and imaginary modes during the Souls’ journey; music signifies the power if the
Muses.
Proairetic (the sequence of events or actions in a text)
The Souls’ journey; crossing the Plain of Lethe.
Semantic (not altogether clear in Barthes’ work but generally sees as consisting of “semes” - texts that
connote rather than denote with a “flicker of meaning”)
Orpheus’ transformation into a swan; Atalanta’s choice of an athlete’s life; referents to a musical life’
the Souls’ choices react against or transcend their former lives; the act of rebirth; the Daughters of
Necessity as the metaphoric expression of the triadic eschatology life / death / rebirth.
Symbolic (related to binary oppositions or themes in the text)
Reward/punishments; elite/common; ambitions/unambitious; male/female; musical/non-musical;
cultured/uncultured; just/un-just; educated/uneducated; authority/disorder; conformity/rebellion;
self/other; love/hate; power/powerlessness; athletic/non-athletic; good/evil; virtuous/non-virtuous; and
wealth/poverty.
Cultural (a category of codes outside the text; that is, the storehouse of knowledge that a person refers
to in negotiating and interpreting everyday life)
Plato extolls Glaucon to refer to his knowledge of everyday life to find meaning in the tale he is about
to be told.

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