An Alternative Approach for Personal Narrative Interpretation: The Semiotics of Roland Barthes

The hermeneutic code

Following Barthes's hermeneutic code, we inquired whether the narrators asked any questions or expressed any doubts with regard to their work. Reading the narrative with reference to this code might well reveal hidden attitudes expressed in these questions. We chose to focus on the voices of the narrators, who raised the questions themselves: What questions do they ask? At what stage do these questions arise? What do the questions imply? Significant findings emerged from an analysis of the narratives according to the hermeneutic code, as described below.

It seems that in Text 1 (as is true of all the narratives in the first phase) no questions were asked and no doubts were expressed about the work. The prominent characteristic in the narrative from this point of view is the unequivocal approach toward decisions and behaviors. The success achieved by the narrator magnifies her feeling of confidence that this is how teenage dropouts should be dealt with, and that the way to channel youth back into normal social functioning depends on devoting informal individual attention to them.

In Text 2, as in 36% of the narratives in this phase, questions and doubts appear. To a certain extent this narrative serves as an antithesis to the previous one because for the first time the voice of the “client”—the pupil—is heard. Thus, when the pupil speaks, her inner world is exposed, and it is suddenly clear that what the teacher confidently thinks is suitable for her is not necessarily right and that every successful treatment of a problem must commence with a dialogue. The narrator learns this the hard way, however. The pupil's reaction sparks deliberations in the teacher and inundates her with questions about issues that have never bothered her before.

Text 3 describes an incident that occurs in the arena of the college. The veteran teacher has joined the college staff and is now occupied not only with questions of imparting knowledge but also with questions dealing with the professional development of the students and with the consequences of the training process. An incident in a faculty meeting exposes her to a situation in which she begins to ask questions and express doubts about her work now, after more than 30 years in the field of teaching.

In conclusion, the hermeneutic code enabled us to track the transition undergone by the narrators from an unequivocal approach to their educational work patterns, to an approach wherein they ask questions, cast doubt, and examine possible alternatives with regard to the situations in which they find themselves.

The semic code

In accordance with the semic code, we searched for patterns or recurring motifs that reflected the teacher's work and world. Reading the narratives evoked many motifs, such as the pioneer (in the narrative about a new initiative in the field of education), good cop–bad cop (ostensibly a strict teacher but with a heart of gold), and so on. However, careful scrutiny of all the narratives revealed that one motif predominates in the first and second narratives and disappears completely from the third narratives. This phenomenon merits attention, and to that end we focused on it.

It turns out that there is a widespread motif in the first group of narratives (it appears in half of the narratives): the savior motif. This motif applies to narrators who establish a personal, generally informal relationship with one problematic pupil out of the entire group (in most cases a class). They elect to invest their therapeutic efforts in a particular pupil and help him or her through his or her darkest hour.

Thus, in Text 1, for instance, the narrator, who is a beginning teacher, devotes herself to taking care of a pupil who is defined as problematic from the point of view of the establishment because she neither studies nor works. It appears that the girl is suffering from a lack of trust in the adults who have tried to look after her up until now because the narrator mentions that she is not prepared to talk to anyone. The narrator, who is young, begins to create informal ties with the girl. Two months later she succeeds in obtaining the girl's trust, and the girl is so grateful that she even remembers to invite the teacher to her wedding. The teacher's framework of action takes place during club hours (in the afternoon) and beyond them as well, probably in the evening, when the narrator is certainly aware of the delicate situation in which she finds herself: “I couldn't be a real friend, because in spite of everything, we came from different places.” Nevertheless, she tries with all her heart to become the girl's friend. It also seems that because the age difference between the two is not particularly big, she manages to make friends with the girl, even though the people who treated her previously failed to do so. Indeed, she obtains the results she anticipates and feels that she has succeeded with the girl.

The narrator's feeling of being the girl's savior is very prominent here. She does not function as a teacher but, rather, as a savior of souls when she consciously moves from the role of teacher to friend/therapist. She is prepared to cross this line to save the girl. School studies are not the issue at all in this narrative, which overflows into the private lives of the characters and into the personal hardships that a teacher—an expert in a discipline—would not necessarily resolve in the optimal way.

Not only does the narrative not deal with study material, but it does not deal with a group either. Although the club is full of children with various types of problems, the narrator's entire attention is devoted to one pupil as an individual. The narrator's personal project brings her to the point that she fails to mention the rest of the youngsters, whom she presumably has to take care of as well.

The savior motif generally appears at the beginning of the career. In the second phase it features in 36% of the narratives, but it gradually disappears over the years. Thus, Text 2 demonstrates the process of change. Here, too, the savior motif appears. The teacher tries to help a girl, except that three changes occur here. First, the voice of the “client,” the pupil, is heard undermining the teacher's confidence in the merit of her actions. The pupil has absolutely no desire to be “saved” in the manner the teacher has chosen. Second, the world of the subject matter being studied enters the picture. The narrating teacher, after amassing some 10 years' experience in teaching, focuses on the thing she has to do: teach pupils. Although it is true that once again she gets into a situation of providing struggling pupils with informal help, this time she focuses on the learning difficulty and not on difficulties that stem from other sources and from the pupils' private lives. Third, the narrative is about two pupils and not about a single pupil.

During the third stage of the teacher's professional life the savior motif vanishes altogether and no longer features in any of the narratives. Text 3 demonstrates this well. Here, the teacher expresses concern about the students in general. She operates in a formal manner and tries to get her colleagues to take part in finding a solution. She does not relate individually to a single pupil but conducts herself professionally and toward a group, her concern being how to enhance the performance of the entire group.

In conclusion, the semic code enabled us to track the narrators' transition from the status of a savior, who deals with isolated cases and focuses mainly on their personal problems, to a professional approach that takes the group into account and focuses on the field of learning, which, after all, is the narrators' area of knowledge and training.

The symbolic code

Barthes's symbolic code led us to scour the narratives for pairs of oppositions that reveal the narrators' reality. The pairs of oppositions express not ideas that are explicit in the text but, rather, the contrary: They express the text's hidden stratum, which is reflected in the abstract ideas that arise from the actions and events. In the narratives a variety of binary oppositions were found, such as inside-outside, single-multiple, and bad-good, but the small-big contrast was the most prominent one (appearing in 85% of the narratives). The contrast appears in most narratives, but a change occurs in the way the narrators employ this contrast to present themselves in relation to their surroundings. The contrast exists in any case, but the narrators shift between its two poles. The narrators express a feeling of “small” in 90% of the first narratives, whereas by the third phase, as a result of the change that takes place over the years, 55% express a feeling of “big” in relation to their surroundings.

In Text 1 the narrator appears as an inexperienced teacher who helps a student confronting severe problems of suicide attempts and detachment. In contrast, a change occurs in the narrator's status in Text 2. Initially she depicts herself as someone who is sure of herself, and appears big and strong in relation to the ignorant little pupils. Even though the pupil's reaction causes her to feel “small” in front of the pupils, the new insights she has obtained with regard to the teacher-pupil, teaching-learning relationship make her stronger. In Text 3 the narrator appears as someone who operates from a position of strength and self-confidence. Although her colleagues do not agree with her ways, she does not fear confrontation and stands alone versus her peer group. She is “big,” and the conflict with her colleagues does not cause her to lose face in her own eyes; on the contrary, it strengthens her position. The ability to cast doubt is an ability that stems from her confidence and powerful status (bigness), and this is very evident in the manner in which she herself proposes options for continuing the actions in the future.

In conclusion, the symbolic code enables us to track the change the narrators undergo in their subjective feeling vis-à-vis their surroundings, from a position of “small” in relation to the world at the beginning of their careers to a position of “big” in the present.

The proairetic code

The Proairetic Code, as Barthes formulated it, is used to examine the verbs in the narrative. Although this code maps the narrators' external actions according to how they report about themselves, these actions carry implications regarding the narrators' work. In this case the analysis required the simple and almost automatic marking of all the verbs and the actions in the narratives. Thus, we found verbs that are linked to teaching and learning and are ostensibly a natural, albeit trivial, part of the educational dialog. They can be classified into verbs that are connected with lesson administration (I began, I spoke, I said) and verbs that express different levels of thinking (they learned, they understood, I thought). It should be mentioned that although these and other verbs, which are connected to both of the above semantic fields, might appear in all of the narratives, the frequency of their occurrence in the narratives was not particularly high.

A major finding that emerged is that in parallel to the “teaching” verbs, stated above, two other groups of verbs were conspicuous: a group that is linked to doing and creating (built, established, created, developed, gave birth, consolidated, achieved, brought off, dealt with, processed, did, saved) and, in contrast, a group linked to destruction and annihilation (killed, committed suicide, died, buried, destroyed, exploded, eliminated, disintegrated, attacked, wounded).

Expressions of creation are common to teachers talking about their work and are dominant in teacher metaphors (Yero, 2002). Nevertheless, these expressions of creation stated along with expressions of destruction is a finding that we did not expect at all, and we would not have looked for it had Barthes not introduced the idea of looking for verbs out of context. Thus, as expressions such as “I exploded,” “I wanted to bury myself,” “he tried to commit suicide,” “he committed suicide,” “if you don't progress, you're dead,” and “I thought my end had come” accumulate, a tension between creation and destruction forms, which might imply how the narrators perceive their work.

Expressions of creation occurred among all the narrators and in most of the narratives (70%). A total of 17 verbs from this semantic field appeared in 7 (64%) of the narratives from the beginning of the career, 25 such verbs appeared in 6 (55%) of the narratives from the middle of the career, and 39 such verbs appeared in 10 (91%) of the final narratives. In other words, we see an increase in the use of doing and creating verbs during the course of the career.

Expressions of destruction and annihilation were used by 10 (91%) of the narrators in at least one narrative during their careers and by 7 (64%) of the narrators in at least two of their narratives. In the case of 9 of the narrators (82%), expressions of destruction and annihilation appeared in their mid-career stories. The expressions of destruction and annihilation can be classified according to the relation between them and the “real” situation presented in the story: We found literal expressions that relate to actual death (died, was killed, committed suicide, will kill) as well as a group of metaphorical expressions (I exploded, I wanted to bury myself, buried her head in the sand). This is how the verbs were distributed among the narratives: Death metaphors appeared in only the second and third narratives. Literal death appeared only in the first and second narratives. The expressions of destruction and creation can be demonstrated in the narratives quoted above as follows.

In Text 1 the girl is described as someone who had already attempted suicide twice, and, in contrast, the teacher implies that she had saved her life. In other words, expressions of literal death as well as of creation appear here. The verbs in this narrative deal dramatically with questions of life and death. In Text 2 the literal expressions become metaphorical, and the teacher mentions that she “exploded” with anger when the pupils dared to complain about her generous assistance at the expense of her break. On the other hand, there are also more low-key expressions of creation as teach and help. In Text 3 a disagreement between colleagues is described as an “attack,” while simultaneously a variety of creation verbs are used: learn, solve, and so on. In contrast to what is commonly thought, it is this narrative—the one about the present—that is laden with verbs of creation that attest to vitality, energy, and willingness to vitally continue engaging in educational work.

The proairetic code, then, enabled us to reveal the dialogue that takes place between situations of destruction and creation in the narrators' world by identifying the dominant verbs in their narratives.

The cultural code

Using the cultural code, we sought expressions that are linked to the dialog that relates to the world of teaching, as this world reflects the narrators' professional reference group. Expressions such as “matriculation exams” or “the pedagogic council” have connotations of professional knowledge that is shared by people who teach. Moreover, the linguistic use of an “encoding” dialogue constitutes a part of the identity of belonging to the reference group, as is the case in any other professional field. Education jargon, therefore, not only expresses a form of communication but also constructs a worldview.

The search for professional expressions that are common to the dialogue of the teaching world revealed that most of the narratives reflect a broad use of power acquisition mechanisms. We hasten to add that power acquisition is not necessarily a negative phenomenon because it is obvious that to lead a group of pupils, the teacher has to acquire authority. We discovered that the narrators use a range of power acquisition strategies that enable them to influence their surroundings and accomplish their objectives. For instance, narrators reported forming a coalition with administrators, maintaining contact with parents, establishing personal ties with pupils, employing innovative teaching methods that spark a special interest in the lessons, and so on.

These strategies can be classified into two behavior patterns. The first is the use of professional knowledge to accomplish educational and personal objectives; for instance, authentic teaching, relating to the class as heterogeneous, acquiring knowledge, and collaborating with colleagues. Although markers of professional knowledge were found in 34% of the first and second narratives, they were found in 73% of the narrators' third narratives. The second pattern is power acquisition through personal ties with pupils, parents, colleagues, and the administration. In the first and second narratives, this pattern can be discerned among 45% of the narrators, whereas in the third phase, we found markers of personal ties in only one narrative. In other words, personal ties are used at the beginning of the career as a method of power acquisition. Later on in the career, this pattern is transformed into the use of professional knowledge.

Thus, when we examine the narratives, we can see that in Text 1 the power acquisition pattern is a way of establishing personal ties with one pupil, ties that persist until the invitation to the wedding. In Text 2 we find a combination of the two patterns. The teacher tries to establish ties (unsuccessfully) with two pupils through the use of professional knowledge. She does so by inviting the pupils to meet her during breaks so that they can do well on the matriculation exams. In the third narrative the teacher operates solely on the professional knowledge pattern. She describes a situation in which she is still constantly searching for ways to improve teaching. Her seniority does not lead her to rest on her laurels; quite the contrary.

In conclusion, the cultural code enables us to track the transition undergone by the narrators from a situation of power acquisition by means of personal ties to the present situation of power acquisition by means of professional knowledge.

Summary of findings: Barthes's codes as a means of narrative analysis

The use of Barthes's five codes as a guide to examining the personal narrative by means of isolating verbs, symbols, professional expressions, contrasts, and questions enabled us to expose hidden strata in the narratives.

The research findings include symbolic, binary, and cultural aspects that are embedded in the narrative's deep structure. Following Barthes's path—albeit making the appropriate modifications for the transition from a developed literary novella to an anecdotal personal narrative—led us to a situation in which we asked new questions about the narratives. Accordingly, the answers we received were surprising and contained the possibility of revealing a facet of teacher educators that had not been revealed before. As a result of looking through Barthes's prism, the teacher educators' professional world acquired a unique and different expression. Thus, one can see that beyond the individual narratives there is a metanarrative of a teacher educators' career development.

We will now sum up and stress the changes that occur during the transition between the three stages of the narrators' careers as they are revealed by means of the five codes: