Isabella Pezzini Semiotics as a critical discourse: Roland Barthes’ Mythologies Abstract: This paper intends to explore the early development of European semi- otics, by bringing into relief the critical aims from which it originated and exam- ining the work of some of its protagonists. In particular, it will examine Mytholo- gies by Roland Barthes, whose centenary was celebrated in 2015 and who found in Saussure and Hjelmslev’s linguistics a theoretical framework which could serve the purpose of exposing precisely the ideological mechanisms at work in a burgeoning consumer society. Now that half a century has gone by since those founding works, it is time to ask if and whether the discipline of semiotics has kept such a fundamental critical preoccupation alive. Keywords: Barthes, Saussure, Hjelmslev, myth, ideology, semiology, narrative There is at present an ever increasing number of occasions for reflection on the beginnings of contemporary semiotics. For example the anniversaries of works and their authors: I am thinking of the 50 th anniversary of a book like Élements de sémiologie, by Roland Barthes (Communication 4, 1964), the centenary of whose birth was celebrated in 2015. But also of the 50th anniversary of a “pre-semiotic” book by Umberto Eco – Apocalittici e integrati – on which a fine collective dis- cussion promoted by Gianfranco Marrone for the online magazine Doppiozero (http://www.doppiozero.com/materiali/apocalittici-e-integrati) has been devel- oped. It is precisely this coincidence of dates which suggested to me the theme of the paper that I am delivering here, dedicated to the critical stance that marks the early development of our discipline, and which offers both a source and a perspective – not only theoretical-methodological – for what Paolo Fabbri has more than once defined the semiotic gaze. The theoretical need for a general discipline of modes of signification and communication, distinct from the other social sciences, found a fundamental impulse in the early and fertile explora- tions of the new variety of signs, texts and media in the consumer society that was developing around the founders of semiotics – great theoreticians as well as accurate interpreters of contemporary society and its cultural output. It seems to me of crucial importance for our discipline to continue to keep in mind today – a Isabella Pezzini, Sapienza University of Rome DOI 10.1515/9781501503825-017 9781501511752_KristianBankov.indb 351 28.03.17 09:45