Saussure

-          language tool of representation (language is a structured system of representation)

-          one way to think about language as representation  = signs

-          linguistic sign unites as a concept (signified) and sound-image (signifier)\

-          (linguistic sign) the relationship between signified and signifier is arbitrary

-          Language only a system of pure value : ideas and sounds

-          Language is not nomenclature, it allows us to perceive the reality

-          Language is a form connecting sound and thought

-          Language is a system of INTERDEPENDEN term in which the value of each term results solely from the simulataneous presence of others

o   Signs combined like links in 2 ways

o   Syntagmatic: all units present in articulation

o   Associative: related present in mind but absent from actual sequence

-          In language there are only differences that are positive

-          Ways in which value can be determined (how is value different from signification):

o   Dissimilar things exchanged for determined values

o   Similar things compared for determined value

-          Saussure’s linguistic distinction between language or the whole system as it exists on the abstract level (Langue and Parole)

Nietzsche

-          Is language full and adequate expression of all realities?

-          Account of languages role in human cognition

-          Gap between first metaphor is big (subject and object)

-          Concept comes into being by making equivalent that is non equivalent

Poe

-          Words or even letters are signifiers – creating poetic effect

-          Language shapes experience

Derrida

-          Thinks about metaphysics included in the language

-          Deconstruction not a theoretical metalanguage – western metaphtsics do binary opposition and hold one privileged over the other

-          Refute the idea that there is only one meaning – deconstruction; there are multiple meanings in the text, often opposite; for example in dissemination, he talks about Plato’s Phaedrus; recorded conversation between King and the God who gives writing as told from Socrates to ponder about writing and speech and in Plato’s phonocentricism, Derrida notes the irony that supremacy of speech is only told through writing (spoken signifier can contain the essence of its signified is logocentrism)

-          Il n’ya pas de hors-texte (there is nothing outside the text)

-          Supplement: talks about writing and supplement; why would we need it? (ie.// preface in the
book) – copy and original (when you read the text, your experience is repetition, copy of text; through copy original is defined

-          Trace and difference

o   Signifier (image-sound) works as a trace that gives the impression that a signified was prior to it

o   Difference  - verb to defer and to differ – shows the  temporal structure of language – always changing in more than one way

o   Signifier points to other signifiers

Lacan – agency of letter in unconscious

-          Conducted psychoanalysis using Saussure’s method

-          Unconscious is structured like language

-          Signifier can change you; signifier used  as treatment

-          Signifier priority over signified why? Because this sound-image structures out existence, so by talking you change something about yourself.

-          Language can transform meaning language is capable of deception

-          Language is possible of distorting meaning through 2 ways

o   Metaphor associated with resemblance – condensation (love like a rose)

o   Metonymy associated with no resemblance – replacement of something entirely different (sails/ hand)

-          Signifier replace one signifier with another

-          While Derrida says we can’t arrive to truth because one signifier other signifier, Lacan says opposite that since signifier can signify another signifier, we can arrive to truth. (or your truth exists somewhere)

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