Student: Jaime Ignacio Bautista Henao / ID: 000234130

Course: Language, Langue and Parole

Professor: Jorge Ivn Jimnez Garca
Date: April 28h, 2015.

AN ATTEMPT OF DIALOGUE AMONG DERRIDA, SAUSSURE, PEIRCE AND KRAMSCH

ON SIGNS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CULTURAL REALITIES:

Derrida, with his deconstructive criticism, questioned the metaphysical dichotomies of

Western philosophical tradition, from Platonism to Structuralism, including Saussures
linguistic theory, who stated that: Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs;
the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first 1. According to Saussure,
signifiers and signifieds are conventionally associated to form linguistic signs which are the
basis of communication for speakers who share a certain linguistic code. Both categories are
mental, which means that when those signs enter the field of speech, their original denotation
is affected by the connotations which emerge from the use of those signs in different
contexts. In that way, for Derrida, both the spoken and the written words do not lead to
specific entities or universal meanings, but to a chain of signifiers which will never fully
contain the presence of the entities they represent.
Later on, talking about Peirce, considered by Derrida as one of the authorities able to
legitimize his attempt to outline a semeiosis of infinite play, the French author refers: Now
Peirce considers the indefiniteness of reference as the criterion that allows us to recognize that
we are indeed dealing with a system of signs. What broaches the movement of signification is
what makes its interruption impossible. The thing itself is a sign2. Everything in reality, as a
symbolic encoding of external entities and meanings, is already a representamen, which
gives rise to an interpretant that becomes a sign as well and so on, indefinitely. Therefore, as
Derrida himself stated that there is nothing outside of the text, which means that reading
cannot properly transgress the written words towards external referents, since the
conceptions about those referents would be signs as well in the network of encoded
experiences expanded along the reading process.
Similarly to Derridas approach to the spoken and the written words, Kramsch describes some
differences between speech, which is transient, additive, redundant, loosely structured
grammatically, lexically sparse, people-centered, context dependent and makes use of verbal
aggregates and formulaic expressions; and writing, which is permanent, hierarchically
ordered, grammatically compact, lexically dense, topic-centered, context reduced, fosters

analysis, logical reasoning, abstract categorization and tends to avoid redundancy. Later on,
talking about situational contexts of literacy events, Kramsch gets close to Derridas notion
of deconstruction. She mentions some situational and cultural dimensions such as the
events captured in the propositional content, the intended audience, the text purpose, register
and key, prior texts and the three senses of the phrase point of view (spatio-temporal,
psychological and ideological)3; in that way, she is considering aspects related to the three
main questions that professor Jorge Jimnez wrote down on the board last class to explain
how Derridas deconstruction worked: What do I want to write/say?, to whom? How do I want
to be read/understood?
Most of what Kramsch refers along the first two chapters of Language and Culture is taken
from the concepts of authors like Saussure and Peirce. To begin with, the notion of
denotation, according to Saussure, corresponds to a definitional, literal, obvious or
commonsense meaning of a sign4, while the notion of connotation corresponds to a sociocultural and personal association (ideological, emotional, etc.) of the sign 5. Kramsch uses
those two notions to talk about how signs mean, and states that meaning could be denotative,
which is when words point to objects of the real world 6 or connotative, which is when words
are linked to the many associations they evoke in the minds of their readers 7.
As we can see, Kramschs conceptions do not differ considerably from Saussures. As he
presumably stated in his Course of General Linguistics: Words are not mere vocal labels or
communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are
collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings
constitute and articulate their world8. Even when Saussures work was mostly constrained to
the study of langue (abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system) 9,
opposed to parole (individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts
made by a linguistic subject)10, these two notions of denotation and connotation cover not only
the aspects related to language as an encoded sign 11, referred as semantics, which are stated
by denotations, but also the ones related to what language does as an action in context 12,
referred as pragmatics, which are stated by connotations.
In that respect, a third form of meaning, classified as iconic by Kramsch, refers us to Peirces
triad of index-icon-symbol, where icon is understood as a sign that physically resembles
what it stands for13, that because of the distinctive qualities that it shares with its object.
According to Kramsch, that iconic meaning takes place when some specific words, such as
exclamations or onomatopoeias, refer to emotions or actions as they imitate them 14. As it
happened with Saussures conceptions about denotation and connotation, Peirces
conceptions about icons are very close to Kramschs and, probably, the only remarkable
difference is the use of that notion as a noun or as an adjective depending on the author.
Besides, Peirces triad of index-icon-symbol is also taken by Kramsch to mention the three
aspects of language: expressing, embodying and symbolizing cultural reality 15. First of all,

expressing can be related to the notion of index, due to the function of indexes of acting as
signs of objects by virtue of a connection between them in which cultural realities are referred;
then, embodying can be related to the notion of icon, due to the function of icons of
reproducing some distinctive characteristics of the cultural reality they refer to and expressing
meaning through different means and media; finally, symbolizing can be related, as we would
certainly expect, to the notion of symbol, due to the function of symbols of founding
conventional connections between speakers and their cultural realities.

REFERENCES:
1. Derrida, J. [1997 (1967)]. Of Grammatology, p. 97.
2. Ibd., p. 113.
3. Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and Culture, pp. 60-62.
4. Taken from: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/dutch/sem06.html
5. Ibd.
6. Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and Culture, p. 16.
7. Idem.
8. Taken from: https://saudalshehri.wordpress.com/the-relation-beyween-semantics-andsemiotics-by-saud-al-shehri/
9. Taken from: https://www.englishforums.com/English/LangueAndParole/bznwxp/post.htm
10. Ibd.
11. Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and Culture, p. 15.
12. Idem.
13. Ibd., p. 16.
14. Idem.
15. Ibd., p. 3.