For Roland Barthes (1915–80), language functions with relatively determinate meanings whereas images "say" nothing. Nevertheless, there is a rhetoric for arranging the parts that are to signify, and an emerging, if not yet generally accepted, syntax that articulates their parts and binds them into an effective whole. Rhetorician Thomas Rosteck defined rhetoric "as the use of language and other symbolic systems to make sense of our experiences, construct our personal and collective identities, produce meaning, and prompt action in the world".[1]