ESPN, Derrida

Derrida’s quote on 127 “Within a language, within the system of language there are only differences. A taxonomic operation can accordingly undertake its systematic, statistical, and classificatory inventory…these differences play a role in language, in speech as well, and in the exchange between language and speech” really stood out for me. I was able to relate Derrida’s reading to what we learned earlier in class with De Saussure (who he is speaking of) and Macherey in how they deal with language. It was a pretty hard read but from what I understood, he was talking about how for everyone and everywhere language is different. It is also completely arbitrary. For instance he states on page 115 about how "you might see a neon sign for SHELL with a faulty circuit for the S so that it reads HELL, though a similar chance occurrence might have made it read SHE or HE or S ELL. However if the word hell were to appear in china they would view it in the same way and read it with the difference that we do, although there would still be a difference as they would it deed read it differently. Signs mean different things in every culture and language. He mentions Difference is it is hard to define because what is what is different to one person is not the same as different to someone else. Also when something is first introduced it is seen as different but after it is normalized it is no longer different, so really is there such thing as difference? Or is just that something has to be different at first but once it is normalized it is not different. In his effort to explain differences he says it is then produced – differed - by difference but then the problem arises what differs who differs? I understood it over all to deal with difference of language in that it is arbitrary but also the word difference in trying to find its meaning.