Editing Différance (section)

== The web of language ==
We reside, according to this philosophy, in a web of language, or at least one of interpretation, that has been laid down by tradition and which shifts each time we hear or read an utterance—even if it is the same utterance. {{lang|fr|Différance}} and deconstruction are attempts to understand this web of language, to search, in Derrida's words, for the "other of language".<ref>Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers, Manchester: MUP, 1984</ref> This "other of language" is close to what [[Anglophone Philosophy]] calls the [[Sense and reference|Reference]] of a word. There is a ''deferment'' of meaning with each act of re-reading. There is a ''difference'' of readings with each re-reading. In Derrida's words, "there is nothing outside the [con]text" of a word's use and its place in the lexicon. Text, in Derrida's parlance, refers to context and includes all about the "real-life" situation of the speech/text (cf. [[speech act]] theory).

=== Temporal delay ===
For Derrida, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is not understood exactly as Saussure described it. For Derrida there is a deferral, a continual and indefinite postponement, which means that the signified can never be reached. The formation of the linguistic sign is not static, but is marked by movement in time. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine Saussure's model as a two-dimensional plane, where each signified is separated from others by the differences in its sound image. (If two sound-images are exactly alike, one would not be able to distinguish between them - cf. ''différence'' and ''différance''.) Each signifier is then a particular point on that plane. Derrida, however, adds a third dimension - time - to account for the temporal act of forming the sign. This is not to say that there is no relationship between the two. However, Derrida felt that the old model focused too heavily on the signifier, rather than on utterance and occurrence. From the point of view of the temporal formation of the sign, the signifier and the signified are severed completely and irrevocably.

=== Example of word introduction ===
An example of this effect occurred in England during the Renaissance, when oranges began to be imported from the Mediterranean. Yellow and red came to be differentiated from a new colour term, "orange". What was the meaning of these words before 1600? – What is their meaning afterwards? Such effects often occur in language and frequently this effect forms the basis of language/meaning. Such changes of meaning are also often centres of political violence, as is apparent in the differences invested in male/female, master/slave, citizen/foreigner etc. Derrida seeks to modulate and question these "violent hierarchies" through deconstruction.

Perhaps it is a misconception that {{lang|fr|différance}} seeks contradictory meanings. It does not necessarily do so. It can, but what it usually describes is the re-experience, the re-arrival of the moment of reading. [[Roland Barthes]] remarked that "those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere".<ref>Barthes, Roland. ''S/Z''. Trans. by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974, pp. 15–6.</ref> This wry comment summarizes the phenomenon of different experience for each iteration.

In discussing just one text we are discussing every text. No distinction is necessarily made between texts in this "basic" level. The difference/deferral can be between one text and itself, or between two texts; this is the crucial distinction between traditional perspectives and deconstruction.