| Summary: | How to decide when a filmmaker effectively diplays an ironic image, i.e, according to Sperber & Wilson, an act of language which « attracts more attention on the utterance itself than on what the utterance is about » ? This is the question of the second-degree of enunciation (and beyond the second one), Roland Barthes suggested to call « bathmology ». Number of challenges wait for scholars : doubts about the sincerity of the filmmaker ; the opportunity spectators have to read ironically, in turn, any proposition, even a « first-degree » one ; finally, on both sides of the screen, a number of trickeries allowing to climb up the stairs of the degrees of enunciation. This essays stops at the fifth step, when communication disappears since no more particular link has to be inferred anymore between sign and meaning.
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