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Lacan takes the term 'signifier ' from the work of the Swiss linguist, [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]. The term was not used by Freud, who was unaware of Saussure's work. According to Saussure, the signifier is the phonological element of the SIGN; not the actual sound itself, but the mental image of such a sound. In Saussure's terms, the signifier is the 'acoustic image' which signifies a SIGNIFIED (sigmfiantSaussure, 1916: 66--7) .
Whereas Saussure argues that the signifier and the signified are mutually interdependent, Lacan states that the signifier is primary and produces the signified. The signifier is first of all a meaningless material element in a closed differential system; this 'signifier without the signified' is called by Lacan the 'pure signifier', though this is a question of logical rather than chronological precedence. 'Every real signifier is, as such, a signifier that signifies nothing. The more the signifier signifies nothing, the more indestructible it is' (S3, 185).
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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