Signifier And Its Meaning

Signifier is an important concept in modern linguistics, which created by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. When building his own language system, Saussure considers that"a language is a system of signs expressing ideas", and this system is a unity of concept and sound pattern. The concept and sound pattern respectively refer to the signifier and the signified. From Saussure's structured thoughts, Derrida puts forward the "deconstruction" thinking. He believes that traditional metaphysics is a kind of logos-centrism, which is the voice-centrism. As Saussure ignored the value of writing, the traditional metaphysics has always promoted the sound and belittle the writing. "Sound is the signifier of thoughts, and writing is the signifier of signifier." However, Derrida objected to the idea, he considered that the writing itself is a signifier system. Furthermore Derrida treats"trace"as generalized writing, and attributable to the voice and language under the"trace". Moreover, Saussure thinks that there is a certain link between the signifier and the signified, and the meaning of signifier comes from the signified. However, Derrida cut off the link. He holds the opinion that the meaning of signifier comes from itself. The differences between signifiers give the meaning. Saussure and Derrida construct the world by writing and language, which is a world of meaning. But in Marxism, the commodity builds a material world. As the words'establishment of a language system, the commodity sets up a material world. The concept of commodity in Marx's thinking is particularly important. Marx believes that commodity has two factors, and labor also has a duality; concrete labor and abstract labor respectively create the use-value and value of commodity. Marx's structure of the commodity, in Derrida's view, has a legacy of metaphysics. However, in today's society, commodities are seen as a kind of symbol. It also has a signifier structure. Brand is the greatest feature of its symbol signifier; advertisement is the most outstanding performance of commodity and its value can be derived from differences of signifier.This article is divided into three parts: The first part is the language thoughts of Saussure, which is mainly about his structural thinking, the meaning of the signifier and the signified as well as their mutual relations. The second part starts from Derrida's thinking of deconstruction, and then I will talk about the Logos-centrism, value of writing, differences from signifier and so on. From those aspects, I will show how Derrida deconstructs Saussure's thinking of metaphysical as well as show that the significance of signifier comes from its own. In the third part, I will associate the Marx's thinking of commodity with Saussure and Derrida's concept of language. Through the discussion of Marx's commodity thinking, I will reveal the internal structure in Marx's thoughts, and discuss the signifier of commodity and its reorientations.