1. What are the signiier and signiied of a favorite item of clothing or jewelry?
Can you think of a way that this sign has already been stripped of history?
2. Why did Barthes think it was crucial to unmask or deconstruct the original
denotation of a sign?
3. Identify two or more distinct nonverbal signiiers from different television real-
ity shows that have basically the same signiied—“You’re out of here.”
4. “It’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings”: what are the denotative signiier, signii ed,
and sign to which this statement originally refers? When spoken about a baseball
game, what connotative shift has altered the meaning of the original sign?
