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a [[Langue ]] Versus [[Parole]]

The relation between the [[signifier ]] and the [[signified ]] must, in general, be constant enough to yield determinate [[meanings ]] based on the conventional uses of [[signs]]. The congruence between your signified [[content ]] and mine (in a given [[social ]] context) as the basis of [[communication ]] is usually explained by the fact that we are both engaged in a shared [[human ]] [[environment ]] obeying rules that [End Page 66] govern the meanings of our [[words ]] and relate us to that environment and the [[conditions ]] pertaining there.

We have noted that [[language ]] provides an [[individual ]] with the resources to attach [[meaning ]] to what happens to him or her and that [[Lacan ]] refers to the [[complex ]] set of signs that an individual has at her disposal as a network of [[signifiers]]. As such it works more or less automatically in that the meanings of words come to us unbidden, as it were (although we can reflect on their interconnected uses). The term network introduces the [[structuralist ]] emphasis on the connections between signs as an important [[supplement ]] to the [[links ]] between the [[sign ]] and the [[world]]. These [[structural ]] connections reveal (to quote Wittgenstein) "the post at which we station the [[word]]" (1953, 29) and vary greatly in complexity. Some signifiers have few connections and play relatively simple roles in our language-related activities, for example, that or here rely on connections only with demonstrative gestures (and contrasting demonstratives like this or there). [[Other ]] signifiers are more complex (insect, for [[instance]]).

Each individual's network is distinctive in some ways because it is formed in parole, those myriad [[particular ]] interactions where a language is learned. It is therefore [[dynamic ]] in the face of [[life ]] situations where new techniques of interaction with [[objects ]] (including [[people]]) are mediated by [[speech ]] (parole). Different scenarios require different signifiers, connect different signifiers, and make certain signifiers more important than [[others]], resulting in different networks. Therefore the signifier "God" or "[[father]]" can be subtly different for everyone but, in [[psychic ]] [[terms]], there is an [[authority ]] and overarching [[absent ]] [[presence ]] central in the meaning complex. A conductor may have many [[conceptual ]] connections involving the signifier "[[Mozart]]," whereas a layman may only [[know ]] that it has something to do with [[music ]] and a Bantu tribesman in a remote village may not attach any meaning to "Mozart" (and may not even have the structural resources to [[understand ]] the meaning of "quark").

Different uses of signs in the [[public ]] world are correctable or explicable so that, even if different individuals have different networks, these are normally commensurable. In learning to interact with others, we recognize that they might have different networks of signifiers. But the divergences are usually comprehensible in that even though you may not expect a stranger to have a strong emotional reaction to the signifier "rain" you would understand the [[moment ]] that you realized that he is a drought-stricken farmer. Signifiers that are likely to [[represent ]] very important things for everybody, such as "father" or "[[mother]]" are emotionally loaded, but not always in the expected (validated or orderly) way. Proper names, like Robert, may be similar because they a draw their meaning from interpersonal encounters and can map onto the networks of others in as many ways as there are located social trajectories.

The words we share are therefore complex and carry with [[them ]] what [[Freud ]] calls "mnemonic residues" of a myriad encounters. They are clues and entry points into the network of signifiers constrained but not exhausted by la Langue. When we contemplate the [[formation ]] of that network, and the [[associations ]] that [[form ]] Freud's mnemonic residues, we can see why Lacan stresses the primacy of the signifier.