Sean Homer, Critical Thinkers : Jacques Lacan. New York: Routledge, 2004. p 40.
There are three essential lessons to be drawn from Saussure’s theory of language:
- Language precedes consciousness; as speaking subjects we are born into language.
- Language does not reflect reality but rather one produces one’s experience within the constraints of the given language system and that language system, to some extent, conditions the nature of one’s experience.
- Language is not an absolute and fixed system within which a singular meaning can be located, but it is rather a set of differential relations.
Saussure’s conception of language as a total system provided the model for Lévi-Strauss’s concept of structure and in turn Lacan’s symbolic order. But there is an important difference between Lacan and Saussure. For Saussure, the two halves of the sign are always inextricably bound together – like two sides of a sheet of paper – and cannot be separated. Taking his cue from Lévi-Strauss’s reflection on the autonomy of the symbolic function, it was precisely the indivisibility of the sign that Lacan brought into question.
THE PRIMACY OF THE SIGNIFIER
Lacan accepted the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign but questioned two of the fundamental premises of Saussurean linguistics: the indivisibility of the sign and the prioritization of the signified over the signifier. (40)