Denotation is the first-order meaning of a sign — the direct, conventional relation between signifier and signified.
The term was formalized by Louis Hjelmslev in Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943) and made central to cultural analysis by Roland Barthes in Elements of Semiology (1964). In Hjelmslev’s framework, denotation is the semiotic system in which the expression plane (signifier) and the content plane (signified) are directly linked. A photograph of a street scene denotes that street — that is its first-order meaning.
Denotation is not “natural” or “innocent.” Barthes argued that what appears to be pure denotation is always already shaped by connotation — the second-order meanings that attach to the sign through cultural convention. The appearance of denotation as a transparent, unmediated relation to reality is itself an ideological effect: it naturalizes what is in fact culturally produced [@barthes_ElementsSemiology_1964].
Relation to connotation
Denotation and connotation form a hierarchy of signification. The denotative sign (the union of signifier and signified) becomes the signifier of a second-order system — the connotative system — whose signified is an ideological or cultural meaning. A photograph of a soldier saluting a flag denotes that scene; it connotes patriotism, national unity, military honor. Myth, in Barthes’s analysis, operates at this connotative level.
Related terms
- connotation — second-order signification built on the denotative sign
- signifier — the form of a sign
- signified — the concept evoked by a signifier
- sign — the union of signifier and signified (in Saussurean terms)
- French Semiology — the school that made denotation/connotation central to cultural analysis
Source: Hjelmslev, Louis. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. University of Wisconsin Press, 1961 [1943]. Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Hill and Wang, 1968 [1964]. See also Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007.