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: [[Fr]]. ''[[lettre]]''
=====Jacques Lacan=====
=====Ferdinand de Saussure=====
[[Lacan]]'s frequent references to the "[[letter]]" must be seen within the context of [[Saussure]]'s discussion of [[language]].
=====Spoken and Written Language=====
In his ''[[Saussure|Course in General Linguistics]]'', [[Saussure]] privileges [[speech|spoken]] [[language]] above [[writing|written]] [[language]], on the grounds that the former appears before the latter both in the [[time|history]] of [[human|humanity]] and in the life of the individual.
[[Writing]] is conceived of as a mere secondhand representation of [[speech|spoken]] [[language]], and the [[signifier]] is conceived of as purely an acoustic image and not as a graphic one.<ref>[[Saussure|Saussure, Ferdinand de]]. (1916) ''[[Saussure|Course in General Linguistics]]'', ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, trans. Wade Baskin, Glasgow: Collins Fontana.</ref>
=====Jacques Lacan=====
=====Material Basis of Language=====
When [[Lacan]] takes up [[Saussure]]'s work in the 1950s, he adapts it freely to his own purposes.
He thus conceives of the [[letter]], not as a mere graphic representation of a sound, but as the [[materialism|material basis]] of [[language]] itself.
<blockquote>"By ''letter'' I designate that material support that concrete discourse borrows from language."<ref>{{E}} p.147</ref></blockquote>
=====Materiality=====
The [[letter]] is thus connected with the [[real]], a [[materialism|material substrate]] that underpins the [[symbolic order]].
The concept of [[materialism|materiality]] implies, for [[Lacan]], both the indivisibility and the idea of locality; the [[letter]] is therefore "the essentially localized structured of the signifier."<ref>{{E}} p.153</ref>
=====Meaningless in itself=====
As an element of the [[real]], the [[letter]] is [[meaning]]less in itself.
=====Examples=====
=====Egyptian Hieroglyphics=====
[[Lacan]] illustrates this by referring to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were indecipherable to Europeans for so long.
Until Champollion was able to decipher them on the basis of the Rosetta Stone, no one knew how to understand these enigmatic inscriptions, but it was nevertheless clear that they were organized into a signifying system.<ref>{{S1}} p.244-5; {{E}} p.160</ref>
In the same way, the [[signifier]] persists as a [[meaning]]less [[letter]] which makes the destiny of the [[subject]] and which he must decipher.
=====Wolf Man=====
A good example of this is the case of the [[Wolf Man]], in which [[Freud]] noted that the [[meaning]]less [[letter]] V reappeared under many guides in the [[Wolf Man]]'s life.<ref>Freud. 1918b.</ref>
