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{{Top}}meaning|signification{{Bottom}}
=====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=====
[[Signification]] is, in [[Lacan]]'s work, not a stable bond between [[signifier]] and [[signified]], but a process -- the process by which the play of [[signifier]]s produces the [[delusion|illusion]] of the [[signified]] via the two tropes of [[metonymy]] and [[metaphor]].
=====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.
<blockquote>"It is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning insists, but none of tis elements consists in the signification of which it is at the moment capable."<ref>{{E}} p.153</ref></blockquote>
=====Metaphor=====
[[Signification]] is [[metaphoric]] because it involves the crossing of the [[bar]], the "passage of the signifier into the signified."<ref>{{E}} p.164</ref>
The fundamental [[metaphor]] on which all [[signification]] depends in the [[Name-of-the-Father|paternal metaphor]], and all [[signification]] is therefore [[phallus|phallic]].
=====Lacanian Algebra=====
[[Signification]] is designated by the [[symbol]] ''s'' in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]] (as in the notion '''''s''(A)''' which labels one of the main nodes in the [[graph of desire]]).
The notation for the [[signified]] is also ''s'', which suggests that for [[Lacan]] the term "[[signification]]" (the process by which the effect of [[meaning]] is produced) and the term "[[signified]]" (the effect of [[meaning]] itself) tend to overlap.
=====Signification and Meaning=====
In the late 1950s, [[Lacan]] establishes an opposition between [[signification]] and [[meaning]] (''[[meaning|sense]]'').
The variety of ways in which these terms have been translated into [[English]] provides difficulty for the [[English]] reader of [[Lacan]].
=====Speech=====
[[Signification]] is [[imaginary]] and is the province of [[speech|empty speech]]; [[meaning]] is [[symbolic]] and is the province of [[speech|full speech]].
=====Psychoanalytic Interpretation=====
[[Interpretation|Psychoanalytic interpretations]] go against [[signification]] and bear on [[meaning]] and its correlate, [[meaning|non-meaning]] (''[[meaning|non-sens]]'').
=====Production of ''Jouissance''=====
Although [[signification]] and [[meaning]] are opposed, they are both related to the production of ''[[jouissance]]''.
[[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}}* [[IndexInterpretation]]* ''[[Jouissance]]''||
* [[Language]]
* [[Meaning]]
||
* [[Metaphor]]
* [[MaterialismMetonymy]]||* ''[[Point de capiton]]''* [[Signified]]||
* [[Signifier]]
== References ==
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[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
