00125--Give and account of Derrida's notion of 'the sign'.



            Derrida brings to a text the knowledge that the marks on a page are not random markings, but signs.  A sign has a dual aspect as signifier and signified, signal and concept, or mark-with-meaning.  To account for significance, Derrida turns to a highly specialized and elaborate use of Saussure's notion that the identity either of the sound or of the signification of a sign does not consist in a positive attribute, but in a negative (or relational) attribute-that is, its "difference" or differentiality, from other sounds and other significations within a particular linguistic system.  This notion of difference is readily available to Derrida, because inspection of the printed pages shows that some marks and sets of mark repeat each other, but that others differ from each other.  In Derrida's theory 'difference' itself supplements the static element of a text and it can be taken as to mean 'negativity'.  'Difference puts into motion the incessant play of signification that goes on within the seeming immobility of the marks on the printed page.
            Derrida calls what is distinctive in the signification of a sign "trace".  This means what "appears" or "disappears".

Labels

Addison (4) ADJECTIVES (1) ADVERBS (1) Agatha Christie (1) American Literature (6) APJ KALAM (1) Aristotle (9) Bacon (1) Bakhtin Mikhail (3) Barthes (8) Ben Jonson (7) Bernard Shaw (1) BERTRAND RUSSEL (1) Blake (1) Blogger's Corner (2) BOOK REVIEW (2) Books (2) Brahman (1) Charles Lamb (2) Chaucer (1) Coleridge (12) COMMUNICATION SKILLS (5) Confucius (1) Critical Thinking (3) Cultural Materialism (1) Daffodils (1) Deconstruction (3) Derrida (2) Doctor Faustus (5) Dr.Johnson (5) Drama (4) Dryden (14) Ecofeminism (1) Edmund Burke (1) EDWARD SAID (1) elegy (1) English Lit. Drama (7) English Lit. Essays (3) English Lit.Poetry (210) Ethics (5) F.R Lewis (4) Fanny Burney (1) Feminist criticism (9) Frantz Fanon (2) FREDRIC JAMESON (1) Freud (3) GADAMER (1) GAYATRI SPIVAK (1) General (4) GENETTE (1) GEORG LUKÁCS (1) GILLES DELEUZE (1) Gosson (1) GRAMMAR (8) gramsci (1) GREENBLATT (1) HAROLD BLOOM (1) Hemmingway (2) Henry James (1) Hillis Miller (2) HOMI K. BHABHA (1) Horace (3) I.A.Richards (6) Indian Philosophy (8) Indian Writing in English (2) John Rawls (1) Judaism (25) Kant (1) Keats (1) Knut Hamsun (1) Kristeva (2) Lacan (3) LINDA HUTCHEON (1) linguistics (4) LIONEL TRILLING (1) Literary criticism (191) literary terms (200) LOGIC (7) Longinus (4) LUCE IRIGARAY (1) lyric (1) Marlowe (4) Martin Luther King Jr. (1) Marxist criticism (3) Matthew Arnold (12) METAPHORS (1) MH Abram (2) Michael Drayton (1) MICHEL FOUCAULT (1) Milton (3) Modernism (1) Monroe C.Beardsley (2) Mulla Nasrudin Stories (190) MY POEMS (17) Narratology (1) New Criticism (2) NORTHROP FRYE (1) Norwegian Literature (1) Novel (1) Objective Types (8) OSHO TALES (3) PAUL DE MAN (1) PAUL RICOEUR (1) Petrarch (1) PHILOSOPHY (4) PHOTOS (9) PIERRE FÉLIX GUATTARI (1) Plato (5) Poetry (13) Pope (5) Post-Colonial Reading (2) Postcolonialism (3) Postmodernism (5) poststructuralism (8) Prepositions (4) Psychoanalytic criticism (4) PYTHAGORAS (1) QUEER THEORY (1) Quotes-Quotes (8) Robert Frost (7) ROMAN OSIPOVISCH JAKOBSON (1) Romantic criticism (20) Ruskin (1) SAKI (1) Samuel Daniel (1) Samuel Pepys (1) SANDRA GILBERT (1) Saussure (12) SCAM (1) Shakespeare (157) Shelley (2) SHORT STORY (1) Showalter (8) Sidney (5) SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1) SLAVOJ ZIZEK (1) SONNETS (159) spenser (3) STANLEY FISH (1) structuralism (14) Sunitha Krishnan (1) Surrealism (2) SUSAN GUBAR (1) Sydney (3) T.S.Eliot (10) TED TALK (1) Tennesse Williams (1) Tennyson (1) TERRY EAGLETON (1) The Big Bang Theory (3) Thomas Gray (1) tragedy (1) UGC-NET (10) Upanisads (1) Vedas (1) Vocabulary test (7) W.K.Wimsatt (2) WALTER BENJAMIN (1) Walter Pater (2) Willam Caxton (1) William Empson (2) WOLFGANG ISER (1) Wordsworth (14) എന്‍റെ കഥകള്‍ (2) തത്വചിന്ത (14) ബ്ലോഗ്ഗര്‍ എഴുതുന്നു (6) ഭഗവത്‌ഗീതാ ധ്യാനം (1)