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=====Jacques Lacan=====
=====Early Work=====
In [[Lacan]]'s pre-1950s writings, the term "[[signification]]'' " is used in a general way to connote both [[meaning]]fulness and importance.<ref>{{Ec}} p.81</ref>
=====Example=====
In 1946, for example, [[Lacan]] criticizes organicist [[psychiatry]] for ignoring "the significance of madness."<ref>{{Ec}} p.167, 153-4</ref>
=====Later Work=====
=====Symbolic Order=====
In the period 1953-7 the term retains these vague associations with the realm of [[meaning]] and [[language]], and is thus located in the [[symbolic order]].<ref>{{S4}} p.121</ref>
=====Latest Work=====
=====Ferdinand de Saussure=====
=====Relation between Signifier and Signified=====
[[Saussure]] reserves the term "[[signification]]" for the relation between the [[signifier]] and the [[signified]]; each sound-image is said to "signify" a concept.<ref>[[Saussure|Saussure, Ferdinand de]]. (1916) ''[[Saussure|Course in General Linguistics]]'', ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, trans. Wade Baskin, Glasgow: Collins Fontana. p.114</ref>
[[Signification]] is, for [[Saussure]], an unbreakable bond; the [[signifier]] and the [[signified]] are inseparable as the two sides of a sheet of paper.
[[Image:SAUSSUREANALGORITHM.gif|right|thumb|Saussurean algorithm|The Saussurean algorithm]]
[[Lacan]] argues that the relationship between [[signifier]] and [[signified]] is far more precarious; he sees the [[bar]] between them in the [[Saussurean algorithm]] as representing not a bond but a rupture, a "[[resistance]]" to [[signification]].<ref>{{E}} p.164</ref>
=====Primacy of the Signifier=====
=====Metonymy=====
[[Signification]] is [[metonymic]] because "signification always refers to another signification."<ref>{{S3}} p.33</ref>
In other words, [[meaning]] is not found in any one [[signifier]], but in the play between [[signifier]]s along the [[signifying chain]] and is therefore unstable.
[[Lacan]] indicates this by coining two neologisms: ''[[signification|signifiance]]'' (from the words [[signification]] and ''[[jouissance]]'') and ''[[signification|jouis-sense]]'' (from ''[[jouissance]]'' and ''sense'').
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Interpretation]]
* ''[[Jouissance]]''
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* [[Language]]
* [[Meaning]]
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* [[Metaphor]]
* [[Metonymy]]
||* ''[[Point de capiton]]''
* [[Signified]]
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* [[Signifier]]
* [[Signifying chain]]
{{Also}}
== References ==
