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{{Les termes}}
signifier (sigmfiant) Lacan takes the term 'signifier' from the work of
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 (Saussure, 1916: 66--7).
It is these meaningless indestructible signifiers which determine the phonological element subject; the effects of the SIGN; not signifier on the subject constitute the actual sound itselfunconscious, but and hence also constitute the mentalwhole of the field of psychoanalysis.
The signifier is the constitutive unit of the symbolic order because it is integrally related with the concept of STRUCTURE; 'pure the notion of structure and that of signifierappear inseparable'(S3, though this 184). The field of the signifier is a question the field of the Other, which Lacan calls 'the battery of logical rather than chronologicalsignifiers'.
While it is true that when Lacan talks about signifiers he is often referring to what others would call simply 'words', the two terms are not equivalent. Not only can units of language smaller than words (morphemes and phonemes) or larger than words (phrases and sentences) also function as signifiers, but so also can non-linguistic things such as objects, relationships and symptomatic acts (S4, 288). The single condition which characterises something as a signifier, for Lacan, is that it is inscribed in a system in which it takes on value purely by virtue of its difference from the other elements in the system.
It is this differential nature of the signifier which means that it can never have a univocal or fixed meaning (S4, 289); on the contrary, its meaning varies according to the position which it occupies in the structure.
signifier 13, 20, 223, 26, 40, 46-8, 61-2, 67, 114, 125-6, 130, 133, 138-9, 141-2, 149-* 60, 176-77, 181, 184, 198-9, 203, 205-14, 217, 219-20, 227-9, 236-7, 241, 247-52, 256-7, * 266, 268-70, 273, 276-7, 278-9, 282, network of signifiers, 42-52, 177, signifier and * signification, 253, signifier and signified, 248, 250 [[Seminar XI]]
== References ==