The hermeneutic code is associated with enigmas of the text. It is entities or elements that articulate a question and its answer, as well as events that prepare the question or delay its answer. When Barthes identifies an enigma in the text he marks it HER. The process of revealing truth by solving enigmas is further broken down in the following sequence:

Thematisation. What in the narrative is an enigma?
Positioning. Additional confirmations of the enigma.
Formulation of the enigma.
Promise of an answer of the enigma.
Fraud. Circumvention of the true answer.
Equivocation. Mixture of fraud and truth.
Blocking. The enigma cannot be solved.
Suspended answer. Stopping the answering after having begun.
Partial answer. Some facets of the truth are revealed.
Disclosure of the truth.

Because the hermeneutic code involves a move from a question to an answer it is one of the two codes (the other being the proairetic or action code) which Barthes calls “irreversible” : Once a secret is revealed, it cannot be unrevealed—the moment of cognition is permanent for the reader. Compared to the detailed sequential actions of the proairetic code, the hermeneutic code encompasses the entire narrative, or at least large parts of it.

	Created by Hannah Morris about 10 years ago

code theory research

Roland Barthes' 5 Code Theory