When reading a text, the word choice encompasses how you understand the way the content is presented. The way that something is described helps to identify the message the author is using to influence the reader. Word choice has influenced various literature, for the purpose of the paper, one essay will be discussed. By looking at Roland Barthes use of context and persuasive word choice, one can understand how it influences readers, which most readers don’t see; this is important because word choice has an impact on how the reader understands content. 

Throughout The Death of the Author it is apparent how the word choice, or better known as “logical literature” affects how the reader understands the text. The logical literature in this essay is meant to convince or persuade the intended audience. Barthes believes that the impact of the work as “the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it…, the voice of a single person, the author confiding in us” (13). This quote shares how the author is “confiding in us” to understand their meaning and interpretation of the text to believe in us to help accomplish the text. 

The author has a persuasive connection to the reader, which in turn makes them understand and believe in what they do because of their experiences with “the image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions” (Barthes 13). The powerful word choice of “tyrannically” makes the author appear to be forcing the words down the readers’ throat, not allowing for their own interpretation. The forceful words affect the emotion of the reader to give off a negative connotation, trying to persuade the readers opinion about the text.

The context supports the language which affects the readers’ interpretation. The context is a valuable tool noted because it is there to clarify and show how “the language knows a ‘subject’; not a ‘person’, and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’, suffices, that is to say, to exhaust it” (Barthes 14).  Determining the subject is important when you’re trying to understand a text so you know what you’re reading about. The story is nourished by how you react to what is being said, the author feels accomplished once you can connect emotionally to the text. The word “diminishing”, strengthens the specific focus how the modern text can be transformed and can create emotions for the reader, “the removal of the author ‘distancing’, the author diminishing like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage” (Barthes 14). The word choice effects the emotion of the reader, the word “diminishing” is used to persuade the reader to agree with the authors point. The emotions created by the text can change how you see or feel, ultimately your opinion on the book and characters can change because of your emotional attachment. The readers’ emotional attachment is because of the word choice and the persuasive language used in the text. 

The language, Barthes uses creates the emphasis on being able to understand the text. Understanding the text and being able to break it down and let the reader build it back up in the best way that they see it is very important, “We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” (Barthes 12). It is very important that the readers build the text back up the way they see it so they can use different tools to better understand the text. When Barthes uses the language, leaving words open for interpretation, intending the reader to arrive at their own opinion, yet he creates an opinion on the use of his language. When the reader is reflecting on the text, though Barthes says he wants the readers to have their own thoughts, he contradicts this by the language he uses. 

We need to be able to make that shift from the author having all the say and making the audience think a certain way about the text, to being able to think freely and not know the author or note what happened in their life to make them write a certain way. The control the author has will remain powerful, leaving the reader to have this presumable thought, even though some try to loosen it, per say, and use language that leave the reader to think freely “it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality” (Barthes 13).  The transformations of the emotional connection are what has to be said to read it from the authors perspective (how you’re wanted to see it), to the readers’ perspective. Barthes speaks on how we need to see the writing as “the neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (12). The subject, meaning the author, needs to slip away and let the reader make their own way around the book and story line. 

 The readers understand how the language, context, and emotion are all connected to each other and emphasizes how Barthes interprets authors and how readers interpret the text. Barthes writes in a way of contradiction, as previously discussed, though he talks about in his content that you should be able to have a free opinion, he creates bias by his word choice, language and context. Knowing an author’s style of writing, can provide the reader with tools on how to limit the bias that could influence the reading. Contradicting content in writing styles affects the emotional connection that the reader has to the text.  By looking at Roland Barthes use of context and persuasive word choice, one can understand how it influences readers, which most readers don’t see; this is important because word choice has an impact on how the reader understands content. 

 