Saussure and Derrida

A acquaintance that studies the animateness of consecrates indoors society is probable . . . I sh both(prenominal) margin presage it semiology (from Greek semeion sign). Semiology would arrangement what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does non to date exist, no angiotensin-converting enzyme tin great deal regularise what it would be. . . . (de de de de de de de de de de Saussure, 196016) In this statement Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the twentieth-century contract of the science of signs, salutes his fortuity almost row and conducts a Greek design. This enterprise has well affected most discussions about spoken communication and of interpretation since its inauguration.Saussure presents the lingual governing body as the place of the sign. Signs dont exist isolated from a system. And it is ein righteousness time a system of deflexions. Unavoidably, the guess of signs leads Saussure to the possibleness of address as sys tem. Later, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) discovers the logocentric dynamic in Saussures new conjecture. Referring to the come of structural philology and semiology, Derrida leads readers beyond Saussure toward a poststructuralist upcoming. It is this logocentrism which, restrain the internal system of spoken row in general by a good-for-naught abstraction, prevents Saussure and the majority of his successors from determining wax and explicitly that which is called the integral and concrete design of linguals (Cours 23). Both Ferdinand de Saussure father of 20th-century linguistics and Jacques Derrida founder of deconstruction show profound impact upon language possibility their ideas laid the basis for considerable developments in linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure on spoken communicationIn itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, whither no flesh is intrinsically determinate. No ideas ar naturalized in advance, and nonhing is distinct, before the door o f linguistic anatomical complex body part. Just as it is impracticable to take a pair of pair of scissors and cut atomic number 53 side of wallpaper without at the very(prenominal) time slickness the other(a), so it is impossible in a language to isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound. To separate the two for hypothetic purposes takes us into either pure psychological science or pure ph unrivaledtics, not linguistics.Linguistics, hence, operates along this margin, where sound and thought meet. The contact among them gives rise to a bring, not a substance (Cours 155-7). This impressive statement from the posthumously published Cours de linguistique generale of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) introduces readers in what was subsequent called as a important revolution in Western thought relating to language. Why Coperni rotter? Beca phthisis just as Copernicus had asserted that the acres revolved around the temperateness, instead of the Sun revolving aroun d the Earth, Saussure asserts aroundthing similar on the subject of language.His possibleness claimed that languages atomic number 18 the instruments that give human beingskind cosmoss prospect to achieve a rational dis impersonate of the realness in which they live. Rather than considering address as unpolluted addition to human comprehension of reality, Saussure considered comprehension of reality as depending substantially upon human practise of the verbal signs that form the language people use. Language is not secondary tho when, quite the reverse, central to human life. As a result, human life is linguistically constructed life. Saussures theory goes far beyond the traditional theory of language as something communicated.It also goes beyond Lockes theory of passwords as symbols that stand for ideas. M all linguistic philosophers had claimed that without language human lawsuit would be lacking its principal instrument of novelty ideas into words. further Saus sures theory goes further and deeper. Saussure indicates the ph unmatchabletic and impressionual aspects of language. Linguistics was for Saussure completely one subdivision of a relating to various branches science of signs that he proposed to call semiology (semiologie). apiece branch of semiology had a theory of the signs which it studied.Consequently, linguistics would need a theory of the linguistic sign, the fundamental unit of langue. such(prenominal) a theory of language Saussure proceeds to offer. As his paper-cutting analogy shows, he deals with the linguistic sign as a unit determined scarce by its form. Its form has two facets, or glacial sides. The Saussurean technical identifications for these two facets of the sign argon signifiant and signifie (the signifying plane and the signified plane) (Matthews 21). Every langue includes semiological system of bi-planar signs. Each sign has its signifiant and its signifie.Despite the fact that for each one plane may, for c onvenience, be analyzed one by one, no linguistic sign can be determined without considering two planes that be equally important. The published in 1916 text of the Cours faithfully reflects Saussures theory about language. That text became the subsequent chapter in the register of ideas about language theory. The text became a cornerstone of modern linguistic theory, as well as the public firmness of purpose of a more general skilful cause of the 20th century that had kernel on such diverse disciplines as psychology, social anthropology and literary criticism.This all-round movement is today known as structuralism. The strong marvel that the Saussurean theory of linguistic organise gives rise is this If our langue is a structure, then a structure of what exactly? (Matthews 69) Saussures answer to this examination is problematic. He identified langue as being at the same time a structure of the mental operations of the human beings, and also a structure of the communicat ive processes by center of which human beings perpetrate their roles as a cultural constitution.So langue is finally supra- several(prenominal) in the relation that it is laid in society and depends for its existence on cultural relations except it assumes in each individual the power of an internally created system of linguistic signs. More exactly, langue, Saussure claims, is never complete in any(prenominal) single individual, b bely exists perfectly merely in the collectivity (Cours 30). Derridas Theory of Language The theory of language to which Derrida wants to turn perplexity is connected with the method linguistic pith is produced.More exactly, the method what on that point is of linguistic significance and non convey in their interconnection is presented. Derrida, in his theory of deconstruction, presents the same structure for some(prenominal) the process of non esthetical negativity and the process of esthetical negativity. Deconstruction is connected with an analysis of the theory of language that, similar to the process of aesthetic negativity, discovers within this theory the seeds of its own downfall. Derrida presents a theory of message that reflects the idea of the iterability of signs and what he calls their supplementary status.Jonathan Culler summarized Derridas central idea in this regard in the following focusing Our earlier formula, meaning is setting-bound, moreover condition is boundless, economic aids us recall why both(prenominal) projects fail meaning is consideration-bound, so intentions do not in fact coiffe to determine meaning context moldinessiness be mobilized. But context is boundless, so accounts of context never provide full determinations of meaning. Against any set of formulations, one can imagine further possibilities of context, including the expansion of context produced by reinscription within a context of the description of it (Menke 96).Considering Cullers interpretation, Derridas thesis of the uncircumventable proclivity of language for crisis is based on the digression in the midst of what one expects context to offer and what it can really do, when correctly viewed. The nonetheless inescapable recourse to context in the determination of meaning frankincense results in a crisis for every attempt to comprehend language. What is suppose to generate definitiveness is itself unlimited and thus the bloodline of unmanaged difference. Derridas general thesis thus is based on the idea that the understanding of the meaning of signs can just theatrical role in a context-bound modality.At the same time that contexts cannot define the meaning of signs since they ar themselves boundless. The boundlessness that meaning cave ins itself to in its context-boundedness is in no way eo ipso the boundlessness of a difference that is inconsistent with any personal identity of meaning (Menke 90). Derrida himself realizes his argument that a honey oil possibilities pass on inv ariably remain open even if one understands something in this excogitate that makes sense (Menke 96) in an equivocal fashion. On the one hand this idea means every sign can solve in different and boundlessly galore(postnominal) contexts.This is precisely what determines the iterability of signs their reusability in contexts that be not actually those in which they were kickoff placed. The usability of signs in boundlessly many contexts in itself, though, in no way is opposite to the definitiveness of its use and meaning as determined by rules of language. Although one might note, with Derrida, that the deconstruction of logocentrism is a search for the other of language (Derrida 1984, 123), this does not contribute to the statement that deconstruction is to begin with concerned with a linguistic theory.This is first and foremost the irresolution of the concrete instance, of the other, which is beyond language (Derrida 1984,123). Far, then, from being a philosophical system th at match to its critics, states that at that place is nothing beyond language and that one is confined within language, deconstruction can be considered as a response. Deconstruction is, in itself, a optimistic response to an alterity which necessarily calls, quote or motivates it. Deconstruction is at that placefore vocation a response to a call (Derrida 1984,118).Derrida claims that the vulcanized fiber of deconstruction is not entirely positive, that is not merely an assertion of what already exists and is known, but that it is an assertion of what is wholly other (tout autre) (Derrida 1992, 27). Derrida claims that difference is not something that can count in logocentric discourse differance is not, Derrida explains, preceded by the institutionary and indivisible unity of a present possibility that I could reserve. What defers presence, on the contrary, is the very basis on which presence is inform or desired in what represents it, its sign, its quarter. Differance is that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language (Positions, 89).Differance is neither structure nor cable, such an alternative itself being an effect of differance. even off so, studying the operations of differance requires that the writer use such concepts as structure and breed and borrow the syntaxic and lexical resources of the language of metaphysics even if the writer wishes to deconstruct this language ( Positions, pp. -10). Derrida indicates that differance is not an origination. Neither language nor writing springs in differance. Instead, Derrida says, differance allows the turn of events of absence and presence, writing and thought, structure and force by means of which the motion of origin comes to know itself. Saussure and Derrida just at this point one is face up with one of the most problematic though fascinating dimensions of Derridas theory.The problem, stated abo ve, is that, as soon as it is acknowledge that at that place are no simplex, unsignified, transcendental signifiers that fix and rationalise the meaning of the words, that there exist no authoritatives to which the words can be attributed, one comes to conditions where even this acknowledgement itself seems to have survive floating (May 125). Derrida resolves this tough situation with the help of above discussed theory of signs and of language create by Ferdinand de Saussure.Despite the idea that language is in a fundamental way a naming process, attaching words to things, Saussure had claimed that language is a system, or a structure. In the structure any individual element is meaningless outside the boundaries of that structure. In language, he asserts, there are only differences. But and here the ideas of Saussure are basic for Derridas deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence these differences are not differences surrounded by positive terms, that is amongst te rms that in and by themselves are connected with objects or things outside the system.Accordingly, in language, Saussure indicates, there are only differences without positive terms (May 127). But if this is true, if there are no positive terms, then it means that one can no longer define the differential position of language itself by means of a positive term either. Difference without positive terms indicates that this dimension must itself always be left unperceived for, near speaking, it is unconceptualizable. It is a difference that cannot be returned into the pronounce of the same and, through a signifier, apt(p) individual characteristics.This suggests, then, that the sour of difference, which, as Saussure reminded us, is the condition for the possibility and functioning of every sign, is in itself a silent exploit (Derrida 1982, 5). If, however, one wants to articulate that one must first of all take into account that there can never be a word or a concept to corresp ond to this silent play. One must also admit that this play cannot merely be scotchd, for one can expose only that which at a certain(prenominal) moment can become present (Derrida 1982, 5).And one must ultimately admit that there is nowhere to begin, for what is put into question is precisely the quest for a just beginning, an absolute point of departure (Derrida 1982, 6). any this, and more, is acknowledged in the new word or concept which is neither a word nor a concept (Derrida 19827) but a neographism (Derrida 198213) of differance. The motive why Derrida uses what is pen as difference (Derrida 1982, 11) is not difficult to understand.For although the play of difference (Derrida 1982, 11) is introduced as something for the opportunity of all conceptuality, one should not make the mistaken opinion to think that one has finally discovered the real origin of conceptuality. That, expressing the same idea but differently, this play is a playful but patronage that transcendent al signified. Strictly speaking, in say to avoid this mistake one must acknowledge that the differences that make up the play of difference are themselves effects (Derrida 198211, professional emphasis).As Derrida claims, What is written as differance, then, provide be the playing movement that produces by means of something that is not simply an use these differences, these effects of difference. This does not mean that the differance that produces differences is someways before them, in a simple and unmodified in-different present. Differance is the non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences.Thus, the name origin no longer suits. (Derrida 1982, 11) Although differance is foursquare connected with a structuralist idea of meaning that Derrida recognizes when he indicates that he sees no reason to question the truth of what Saussure proposes (Derrida 1976, 39), there is one important aspect in which differance is outside the scope of structura lism. The point here is that Derrida clearly refuses to accept the primary character of structure itself. bodily structure is not a transcendental represented (for which reason Derrida notes that he does not want to question the truth of what Saussure proposes on the level on which he says it original emphasis but does want to question the logocentric way in which Saussure says it (Derrida 1976, 39). Structure is even less the effect of an original presence coming before and make it (Derrida 1978, 278-9). What differance tries to express is the differential character of the origin of structure itself.It is in this relation that one might observe that Derridas writing is poststructural. To some degree, surely, differance appears when Saussures examination of how language operates. In language, Saussure indicates, there are only differences. yet more important a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up but in language there are only differen ces without positive terms (Positions, 120). Derridas differance in an obvious manner is like Saussures differences.At the end of Positions, for instance, Derrida specifies as differance the movement according to which language, or any other code, any system of reference in general, is constituted historically as a tissue of differences (Positions, 104). But Derrida makes an effort to go further. Whereas Saussure considers the differences in a semiotic system as the set of constantly changing relationships the verbalizer manipulates in order to produce meaning, Derrida defines differance as the boundless disappearance of either an origin of or a final place for meaning.When Derrida describes differance, he always does so by examining what it is not. Rather than considering language in the traditional way, as a set of remote signs of already farmed internal thoughts (characteristic of logocentrism), Derrida, like Saussure and modern linguistics, thinks of users of language producin g coded, that is, repeatable, marks or traces that originate from within certain unities of meaning as effects of the code. These traces are not fundamentally meaningful in themselves but arbitrary and conventional (Menke 96).Thus there is no difference whether one says rex, rol, or king so long as we those who share these conventions can tell the difference between rex and lex, roi and loi, and king and sing (Menke 96). The meaning is a process of the difference, of the distance or the spacing between the traces, what is called, in an utterly serious way, the play of differences or traces. By the play of differences Derrida defines the differential spacing, the recognized distance, the recognized (heard, seen) intervals between traces first analyzed in structural linguistics (Menke 97). ConclusionA comprehensive historical examination of deconstruction would necessarily include numerous precursors and forerunners Freud, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Niet zsche, Saussure. . . . However, it can be said that the history of contemporary deconstruction begins with Jacques Derrida De la grammatologie (1967) that opens with a reexamination of Saussure. Saussures theory of language is here framed within a metaphysical system that extends from Plato and Aristotle to Heidegger and Levi-Strauss. By Derrida this theory is called logocentric. Saussure marks a lowest stage of the long logocentric epoch.Derrida indicates that logocentrism imposed itself upon the world and controlled the theory of language. Derridas contributions laid install for future epoch. In the role of prophet, Derrida concludes his Exergue indicating The future can only be evaluate in the form of an absolute danger. It is that which breaks abruptly with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed, presented, as a soma of monstrosity. For that future world and for that within it which will have put into question the set of sign, word, and writing, for that which guides our future anterior, there is as yet no exergue (Derrida 1967).