00105--Explain 'binary opposites'? Or The concept of negative differentiation

            In simple terms, binary opposites are pairs of signs with opposite meanings.  Many examples are there in English.  Hot/cold, good/bad, black/white and son.  Saussure thinks beyond this.  He emphasized the negative, oppositional differences between signs, and the key relationships in structuralist analysis are binary oppositions (such as nature/culture, life/death).  Saussure argued that 'concepts ....are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system.  What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not'.  We understand day as what is not night.  A population which hasn't ever experienced the pains of war will not fully understand the sense of the term peace.  The notion may initially seem mystifying.  The concept of negative differentiation becomes clearer if we consider how we might teach someone who did not share our language what we mean by the term "thick".  It is impossible to show them a range of different objects which are think.  Because an object is neither think nor thin until it is differentiated from another one.  Se we could place two books.  One has 100 pages the other 50-0.  The second one is thick.  The listener understands very clearly.  The word 'thick' derives from its meanings from its opposition to the term 'thin'.  As far his 'emphasis on negative differences, Saussure remarks that although both the signified ad the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, the sign in which they are combined is a positive term.