LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 2
WITHDRAWALS FROM MEANING
— page 39 —
Rather, it is evidence of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, what Saussure considers the functional unit of language.
Carefully distinguished from the meaning-packed symbol, the sign is composed of two elements which Saussure illustrates as an encircled ratio with the signified (or concept) on top and the signifier (or sound-image) on bottom. Their connection is arbitrary. But it is based on societal convention and therefore not susceptible to the dissenting intentions of individual authors, readers or the prejudices of interpreters. While signifier and signified are distinct, they are nevertheless inseparable, like two sides of a sheet of paper. Together they function as a unit to produce signification (or meaning). But signification is not Saussure’s primary focus. The emphasis falls instead on the value each element has through its difference from similar elements at its own level. There are thus two chains of differences which diverge from each other in parallel fashion, with intervallic correspondences between those pairs of elements which make up individual meaning-units. For instance, the value of the signifier ‘dog’ is in being neither ‘cat’ nor ‘house,’ etc. By simultaneously considering their corresponding signifieds, the meaning of ‘dog’ can likewise be defined. Although here Saussure changes terminology. There are not differences between meaning-units, but oppositions; at the level of its meaning, ‘dog’ is opposed to ‘cat.’ This distinction reflects the (mathematical) sign qualities assigned to language. That is, while signifier and signified are purely differential and thus negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact.
Given that the linguistic sign holds together the two differential chains of values at particular intervals, Saussure’s characterization of meaning-units as positive is apt. He does tend to treat meaning as relatively stable. But at its most consequential, his work anticipates post-structuralism which will underscore the instability of meaning. Hence, when the syntagmatic relation (which refers elements to others in the same chain), is pitted against the paradigmatic relation (which refers elements to others present in the mind but absent from the chain), it is implicitly understood that no perfect one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified exists. From the structuralist perspective, those textual ambiguities known since the time of Flacius are inescapable. Not due to authorial or interpretive ineptness, such ambiguities are instead inherent to language. The differential chains of language effectively rend meaning so as to prevent its uniform consistency. These mechanisms of language are what interest Saussure the most, not carrying them out in expressions of meaning. His work deeply informs all subsequent treatments of language as structural form and not as that which houses a mystical substance.
In many ways Jakobson stands at the summit of classical structuralist thought. He has decomposed language to a much greater extent than Saussure, producing elaborate and often quite obscure linguistic categories. But many highly useful concepts have also resulted. Through his analysis of aphasia, Jakobson for the first time discerns and sets into opposition two primordial
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