Roland Barthes on Language as Skin in 'A Lover's Discourse'

Roland Barthes (1915-1980), the French philosopher and literary theorist, conceived of language as a skin in his 1977 work 'A Lover's Discourse: Fragments'. Born in Cherbourg, Normandy, and raised in Bayonne before moving to Paris, Barthes studied classics at the Sorbonne in the late 1930s. After tuberculosis exempted him from WWII military service, he earned a diplôme d'études supérieures in 1941 for a thesis on Greek Tragedy. He taught in France, Romania, and Egypt, contributing to the left-leaning newspaper Combat. His first book, 'Writing Degree Zero' (1953), sought writing devoid of ideological or stylistic influence. In 1957, 'Mythologies' collected essays from 1954-1956 exploring modern myth-making through semiology, analyzing signs like Burberry scarves, wrestling, and detergent. Barthes argued that signs have denotation (literal meaning) and connotation (associated meaning), and are polysemic—read differently based on class and ideology. In 'A Lover's Discourse', he abandoned narrative to write without social context, stating: 'Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other.' He referenced Alcibiades' speech in Plato's Symposium to argue that all discourse on love is spoken for someone, making language an intimate, skin-like contact. Barthes died in 1980.