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Roland Barthes (12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French writer, sociologist, literary critic, semiologist, and philosopher.

Graduated in Classical Letters in 1939 and Grammar and Philosophy in 1943 at the University of Paris, he was part of the structuralist school, influenced by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Critic of the complex theoretical concepts that circulated within French educational centers in the 50s. Between 1952 and 1959 he worked at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique - CNRS.

Barthes used semiotic analysis in magazines and advertisements, highlighting its political content. He divided the process of signification into two moments: denotative and connotative. Briefly and essentially, the first dealt with simple, superficial perception; and the second contained mythologies, as he called the systems of codes that are transmitted to us and are adopted as standards. According to him, these ideological sets were sometimes absorbed unnoticed, which made it possible and feasible to use communication vehicles for persuasion.