“What Is a Woman?”—From Inherited Sign to Legal Operator

Introduction: When Inherited Meaning Is No Longer Enough

The question “What is a woman?” rarely causes difficulty in ordinary language. Speakers acquire the term early, use it fluently, and navigate its meaning without conscious reflection. In everyday contexts, it functions smoothly, without hesitation or demand for explicit definition. Yet in academic, legal, or political settings, the same question often produces silence, deferral, or visible unease.

This contrast does not indicate ignorance or breakdown in understanding. Rather, it signals a shift in the semiotic conditions under which the question operates. The problem lies not in the word itself, but in the system that requires it to perform a different function.

Language as an Inherited System

Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception of language provides a critical starting point. For Saussure, language is not a tool invented or modified at will by individual speakers, but a social institution transmitted across generations. Speakers do not choose the basic elements of the system they inherit; they enter a network of signs already in place.

As Saussure observes in the Course in General Linguistics, the initial assignment of a signifier to a concept can be imagined theoretically but never historically observed. Language always presents itself as already constituted. This inherited stability explains why most words function without explicit definition, their value is sustained synchronically through a system of differences and collective usage, not by conscious agreement or individual intention.

At this level, no individual possesses the authority to assign meaning unilaterally. The sign “woman” operates as a complete unit, signifier and signified bound together within a shared linguistic practice. Its intelligibility depends not on formal criteria but on participation in a historically sedimented system of use.

Recognition Without Codification

The stability of inherited terms does not depend solely on formal rules or exhaustive definitions. Ordinary language operates through recognition rather than codification, allowing speakers to navigate categories using social cues, perceptual experience, and habitual patterns of use. Minor ambiguities rarely disrupt communication, as they are absorbed naturally through practice.

Meaning at this level is practical rather than normative. Language operates descriptively, not juridically. Its effectiveness depends precisely on the fact that it need not be fully specified. For this reason, the term “woman” rarely requires clarification in everyday interaction, intelligibility is sustained by shared forms of life and linguistic competence, not by explicit criteria.

This mode of functioning presupposes a background consensus that remains largely implicit. The sign works because its meaning does not need to be articulated in order to be recognized.

From Description to Operation: The Second Semiotic Order

Roland Barthes’s distinction between first-order and second-order semiotic systems helps clarify what occurs when inherited linguistic terms migrate into institutional domains. 

In first-order systems, signs describe and differentiate within a shared social world. In second-order systems—law, politics, ideology—the same signs are redeployed to perform functions: to regulate behavior, authorize decisions, and distribute rights or obligations.

Barthes formulates this shift succinctly: “what is a sign in the first system becomes a signifier in the second.” The sign does not disappear, but its mode of operation changes.

When “woman” enters legal or administrative discourse, it ceases to function merely as a descriptive term. It becomes an operator whose application carries material, normative, and enforceable consequences. The inherited stability that suffices in ordinary language is no longer adequate. This transition is neither neutral nor automatic; it alters the very conditions under which the sign must function.

The Emergence of the “Empty” Signifier

At the second semiotic level, the linguistic sign “woman,”originally composed of signifier and signified, functions as a signifier in its own right. Its ordinary meaning does not vanish, but it can no longer be tacitly presupposed. As Barthes notes, myth (or second-order signification) “empties” the first sign of its fullness, not by erasing it, but by placing it at a distance.

First-order signs, when redeployed in second-order systems, retain their form but lose the automatic co-presence of signifier and signified that characterizes everyday language. To operate effectively within institutional frameworks, the sign must be re-signified. Its meaning must be made explicit, accountable, and operational.

The difficulty arises precisely here. In first-order language, “woman” functions as a stable sign because its meaning is socially maintained and practically sufficient. In the second order, this stability is suspended. The signifier requires a newly articulated meaning in order to regain completeness and to act within a system that demands formal applicability.

The sign is “empty” not because it lacks content in ordinary usage, but because its inherited meaning cannot be directly transferred into a domain that requires explicit criteria and legal or administrative precision. What was once sustained by shared recognition must now be reconstructed under conditions of institutional accountability.

Why Silence Becomes Rational

The hesitation observed among academics, jurists, or medical professionals reflects this structural shift. Their reluctance does not indicate uncertainty about ordinary meaning. It signals awareness that any definition in a second-order system is normative: it draws boundaries, includes or excludes, and entails consequences for rights, obligations, and protections.

Silence, in this sense, is not failure but strategic restraint. It acknowledges that the question “What is a woman?” has moved from a descriptive domain into one requiring deliberate and accountable allocation of meaning.

A Structural Misalignment Disguised as Controversy

Much contemporary debate stems from failure to distinguish between semiotic orders. Assertions such as “no one knows what a woman is” conflate the operational challenge of institutional categorization with the functionality of everyday language.

A more precise view recognizes that while the term functions effectively at the first level, its deployment in second-order systems demands active recalibration. The apparent impasse is therefore structural, not merely cultural or semantic. Treating an inherited sign as if it could operate unchanged in a regulatory framework produces confusion over intelligibility rather than attention to the substantive decisions institutions must make.

Conclusion: No Innocent Definition

Distinguishing between semiotic levels does not resolve normative disputes, nor does it dictate legal outcomes. It clarifies, however, why certain questions generate hesitation rather than dialogue. Ordinary language cannot bear the weight of legal precision without transformation, just as theoretical indeterminacy cannot replace the provisional closures required for law to function.

Understanding the semiotic shift restores clarity, the challenge lies not in knowing what a woman is in everyday life, but in recognizing that institutional contexts require the deliberate and accountable assignment of meaning.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957.
Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.
Harris, Roy. Saussure and His Interpreters. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
United States Supreme Court. Oral Argument Transcripts in Cases Concerning Sex-Based Classifications.