Narrative Codes

Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes was a semioligist; basically he was paid to look at the texts to decipher how they were put together. He described it like a ball of string, texts may be..
open - unravelled in lots of different ways        
closed - when there is only one obvious thread to pull on.

Threads you pull on to try and unravell meanings are called Narrative codes and can be catagonsed in five ways.

Action code – something that implies something is going to happen
Enigma Code – something within a story makes you hink whats going to happen
Semantic Code – anyhing that siggests a particular often additional meaning by way of connoation
Cultural Code – relyson audience knowing same thing – body of knowledge
Symbolic Code – binary opposites

Binary Opposites - Levi Straus
He believed that the world was split into a series of binary opposites. Essentially only one thing can be defined in relation to something it isn't. E.g. a hero is only a herp is there is a cowardly option.

Ideology
An organised collection of ideas. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision as a way of looking at things, a belief which helps explain the world around us.