Signifier and signified

signifiant / signifié

The two faces of a linguistic sign: the sound-image that signifies and the concept signified; together they form the sign.

The 4 claims that turn on it

In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.

Lecture 19Structuralism and Anthropology

SaussureL19 · 25:13

Proper study of language brackets the signified, the real cat the word points to, and examines how signs work as a system at one moment.

Put simply Saussure: to study language properly, set aside the real things words point to, such as the actual cat. Look instead at how words work together as a system at a given moment.

In the text In the Course in General Linguistics (1916; Baskin translation, p. 66), Saussure writes: "The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image."

ShoreL19 · 31:48

As Shore reports the structuralists, language need not voice or mirror a meaning already present: it produces that meaning, and signs structure the way we think.

Put simply Shore's account of the structuralists: language does not just express or mirror meanings that already exist. It creates meaning, and words shape how we think.

Lecture 22French Post-Structuralism: Derrida and Deconstruction

DerridaL22 · 22:36

Any given sign draws its meaning from the signifiers it is not, which are absent; so language turns on absence more than on presence.

Put simply Derrida: a word gets its meaning from all the words it is not ("cat" is not "bat" or "hat"), and those are absent. So language depends more on what is missing than on what is there.

DerridaL22 · 27:53Core idea

A sign can only be a stable unity if something anchors it: an arche or transcendental signified that fixes the signifier-signified gap as absolute and irreducible.

Put simply Derrida: a word could keep one fixed meaning only if something outside language anchored it, a first origin or ultimate meaning (a "transcendental signified") that ties word and meaning together for good.

How these claims connect

Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.

Shore rereads Saussure

SaussureProper study of language brackets the signified, the real cat the word points to, and examines how signs work as a system at one moment. L19 · 25:13

ShoreBracketing subject and object alike and studying only how signifiers interact is structuralism's own route past the bridge problem of how subject reaches world. L19 · 47:26

Shore reads the structuralist bracketing of the signified through Husserlian bracketing, widening it to subject and object.

Derrida builds on Derrida

DerridaA sign can only be a stable unity if something anchors it: an arche or transcendental signified that fixes the signifier-signified gap as absolute and irreducible. L22 · 27:53

DerridaNot only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together. L22 · 28:52

If a stable sign needs an absolute foundation, denying any such foundation removes the sign's guaranteed unity.

Derrida builds on Saussure

SaussureNothing natural or God-given ties a signifier to its signified: the word dog refers to dogs only by differing from cat and hog, and by sheer convention. L10 · 20:22

DerridaAny given sign draws its meaning from the signifiers it is not, which are absent; so language turns on absence more than on presence. L22 · 22:36

If meaning comes from differences, it depends more on what is absent than presentOur inference

Related terms

Terms that appear in the same claims.

bracketing (parenthesizing the referent)Formalists set aside what words refer to and study how language works in itself; Shore compares the move to Husserl's bracketing.

synchronie / diachronie

synchrony vs. diachronySynchronic analysis studies a language as a system at one moment; diachronic analysis studies its change over time. Saussure treats them as distinct fields.

linguistic structuralismMeaning lives in differences within a system, not in things; the background that let avant-gardists detach words from referents.

presence vs. absenceBinary on which the speech-over-writing ranking rests; Derrida argues language is driven more by absence and that presence is an illusion.

différance

différance (difference and deferral)Derrida's coinage joining "to differ" and "to defer": meaning depends on difference from other signs and is always postponed, never finally complete.

archē

arche (first principle, origin)An absolute origin or foundational first principle that would ground a structure and keep its meaning stable.

signifié transcendantal

transcendental signifiedA meaning outside the play of signs that would anchor all the rest; in Derrida's argument a stand-in for God or any unifying first principle.