“Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences.” (127)
When we did the dictionary activity in class I was really amused. I've always found this concept frustrating in dictionaries...one word leads to another which means either entirely the same thing or different thing. In the end you really end up with a bunch of nothingness. So that's what our language is, nothingness. A bunch fo strung together nothingness that we somehow make sense out of.
What if nothing meant what we think it means? If we did the honest break down of every word in a book and the way it was put together with all the other words, how different might the end result be? Symbolism and that sort is all workings of the mind and semiotics. We really don't have any major construction of language.
Derrida was a complete reinforcement of DeSaussure and Macherey even. What is language really? What is communication? Its no wonder no one really ever understands one another.
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