{"id":3938,"date":"2009-10-08T22:17:40","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T03:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=3938"},"modified":"2009-10-08T22:22:39","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T03:22:39","slug":"pluth-signified-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/10\/08\/pluth-signified-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"pluth signified effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan\u2019s theory of the subject<\/em> New York: SUNY Press, 2007.<\/p>\n

Certainly meanings can be quite clear at times. By saying “pass me the salt,” my intention is probably clear … But the idea of a meaning or signified effect recalls to us that there is always more evoked by words than what one wants them to mean, and it is not always possible to reduce evocation down to the kind of fixed meaning possessed by signs. The point here is that even when I say “pass me the salt,” there is still more said than what we might normally take the phrase to mean. … Maybe I am quoting someone … or maybe [it’s] an idiomatic expression from my part of the country meaning “how great!” or something entirely different. .. But I am simply trying to illustrate that what is being spoken of here as the signified \u2014 always really just a signified effect \u2014 is something other than what we might take the more or less easily determinable meaning of a signifier or phrase to be<\/p>\n

This “easily determinable meaning” never completely does away with the aura of ambiguity surrounding every signifier and every signifying chain. This aura of ambiguity is just what Lacan’s idea of a signified effect is trying to account for <\/strong>(32).<\/p>\n