Signifi-can't

Saussure's excerpt brought up a few very abstract but intriguing ideas about how language operates. The idea that I'll discuss is that "signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (39) This idea is a strong contradiction to what we are originally led to believe, that objects' names seem to emanate out of them, their name is almost part of their essence. Saussure is saying that this is not true at all, a sign has no intrinsic value, no true connection to what it is supposed to represent, rather its function only rises to the surface when compared to other signs. The relative position is determined through the system of negative difference that he also discusses. Something has meaning strictly because it is not something else, this system is what gives signs a relative position and in turn, a function.

Our recent discussion on post-structuralism complicates Saussure's ideas in that his ideas on the system of difference included its stability. However, post-structuralists, while believing in the system of negative difference to define meaning, think of it as an unstable structure. Their ideas work to deconstruct and decenter ideas, trying to expose the lack of stability in language, and in this particular case in the idea of meaning through position, or difference.