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Saussure and the Problem of the Sign

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1. The Problem of Conceptual Vocabulary Words such as word , meaning , concept , and sign seem familiar enough in ordinary use. We can usually understand one another without deciding exactly what each denotes or how the terms relate to one another. In everyday language, speakers intuitively recognize the units that matter in discourse, even though they may not be able to explain systematically how those units are distinguished or related. The difficulty begins when these expressions enter a theoretical vocabulary, where distinctions that ordinary language leaves implicit may need to be made explicit. This raises a more specific question: What happens when the vocabulary available to a theory does not provide the distinctions that the theory needs to make? At that point, the task may involve more than determining what a familiar concept means. It may require refining an inherited term, assigning it a more precise function, or introducing new terms whose relations make a theoret...
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Are Word and Concept the Same? Natural Language and Philosophical Language

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“When I say ousia or on for Being, it's not simply a conventional sign associated with a concept; you cannot dissociate a concept from a language, from what we call a natural language.” — Jacques Derrida , Talking Liberties , interview with  Alan Montefiore 1. The Problem of Familiar Words When we read philosophy, we encounter words such as word , term , meaning , concept , language , and sign , and we usually have little difficulty understanding them in ordinary contexts. We know what a word is, what it means for something to have a meaning , and what it is to call something a concept . The difficulty begins when these familiar terms become part of a philosophical argument, where distinctions that seem obvious in ordinary contexts may acquire a more precise or entirely different role. This becomes particularly clear with the word concept . When philosophers speak of a concept , are they referring to something in thought, something expressed by language, an abstract enti...
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Why Deconstruction? Science, Technology, and the Concept Under Pressure

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“And thus we say ‘writing’ for all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial, musical, sculptural ‘writing.’ One might also speak of athletic writing, and with even greater certainty of military or political writing in view of the techniques that govern those domains today. All this to describe not only the system of notation secondarily connected with these activities but the essence and the content of these activities themselves. It is also in this sense that the contemporary biologist speaks of writing and pro-gram in relation to the most elementary processes of information within the living cell. And, finally, whether it has essential limits or not, the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing”. — Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology Introduction — Why Does Derrida Deconstruct ...
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