Sean Homer, Critical Thinkers : Jacques Lacan, New York: Routledge, 2004.<\/p>\n
Signifier<\/strong><\/p>\n ________________<\/strong><\/p>\n signified<\/p>\n The capitalized Signifier takes precedence over the signified and the \u2018bar\u2019 between the two elements symbolizes, for Lacan, not the inseparability of the sign but its fundamental division. The bar functions as a barrier to meaning.<\/strong> What a signifier refers to is not a signified, as there is always a barrier between them, but to another signifier. In short, a signifier refers us to another signifier, which in turn refers us to another signifier in an almost endless chain of signification. If we try to define the meaning of a specific word or concept, for example, we can only do so through other words; we are caught in a continual process of producing signs.<\/p>\n Meaning is not fixed, or as Lacan puts it, there is \u2018an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier\u2019<\/strong> (1977c [1957]: 154).<\/p>\n Lacan, however, is not suggesting that there is no \u2018fixed\u2019 meaning at all. There are what he called \u2018anchoring points\u2019 or \u2018points de caption<\/strong>\u2019, where this incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier stops and allows for moments of stable signification. The point de caption literally designates an upholstery button of the kind one finds on sofas and mattresses and which are used to hold the stuffing in place. Saussure\u2019s \u2018scientific\u2019, as opposed to historical, analysis of language provided Lacan with a model to study Freud\u2019s \u2018talking-cure\u2019. Saussure revealed how there was a \u2018structure\u2019 within us that governed what we say; for Lacan that structure is the unconscious. <\/strong>The unconscious is at once produced through language and governed by the rules of language. The precise mechanism through which this takes place was provided by Roman Jakobson.<\/p>\n ROMAN JAKOBSON (1896\u2013 1982) Jakobson took up Saussure\u2019s distinction between the two axes of language \u2013 the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic \u2013 and proposed a correspondence between these axes and the rhetorical figures of metaphor and metonymy.<\/p>\n Metaphor<\/strong> is the use of a word or expression to describe something else without stating a direct comparison.<\/p>\n Metonymy,<\/strong> on the other hand, is the use of a term for one thing applied to something else with which it is usually associated, for example, when one says \u2018crown\u2019 for the position of the monarch, or \u2018sail\u2019 to imply a boat. Jakobson pointed out that metaphor is an act of substitution of one term for another and thus corresponded to the paradigmatic axis, or the axis of selection. Metonymy is a relation of contiguity, in that one term refers to another because it is associated or adjacent to it, and therefore it corresponds to the syntagmatic axis, or the axis of combination.<\/p>\n Lacan saw in Jakobson\u2019s structural model of metaphor and metonymy a direct correspondence with Freud\u2019s processes of dream work: condensation and displacement. Condensation <\/strong>designates the process whereby two or more signs or images in a dream are combined to form a composite image that is then invested with the meaning of both its constitutive elements.<\/p>\n In persecutory dreams, for example, the dreamer may dream that they are being punished by an unknown authority figure and try to identify that figure with someone in their life. This figure may well in fact not be a single person, however, but a composite, or condensation, of a number of different persons \u2013 parental figures, employer or partner. All of the ambivalent feelings that the dreamer has around these figures combine into a single persecutor in the dream.<\/p>\n D<\/strong>isplacement <\/strong>describes the process through which meaning is transferred from one sign to another. Let us take the example of anxiety dreams. In anxiety dreams the dreamer may become anxious about some very minor incident in their lives, but this functions as simply a way of avoiding, or displacing, a much more serious problem that they are facing. These two processes are what Freud called primary processes in contrast to the secondary processes of conscious thought. By mapping Jakobson\u2019s distinction between metaphor and metonymy on to Freud\u2019s primary processes Lacan was finally able to demonstrate how the unconscious was structured like a language. The unconscious, he argued, operates according to the rules of metaphor and metonymy. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sean Homer, Critical Thinkers : Jacques Lacan, New York: Routledge, 2004. Signifier ________________ signified The capitalized Signifier takes precedence over the signified and the \u2018bar\u2019 between the two elements symbolizes, for Lacan, not the inseparability of the sign but its fundamental division. The bar functions as a barrier to meaning. What a signifier refers to … Continue reading “homer signification Saussure”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,119,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-language","category-symbolic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3764"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13114,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764\/revisions\/13114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}