The Difference Between Derrida and Locke (and their similarities to Lakoff and Johnson)

Jacques Derrida strives to challenge traditional assumptions about language and meaning in his essay "Differance." He claims that substantive units of language are actually determined by outside forces and that our perception of reality works in a similar way. This is a very similar critique to the one made by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in "Metaphors We Live By" where they explore how the way we think and the way we speak is heavily reliant on metaphors we have created. Derrida's views of language and speech can also be applied to Locke's ideas in that they both stress that words are incapable of holding meaning on their own, however, Derrida takes his theory a step farther and explains how it is that words come to have meaning based on their differences to all other words and meanings.

Derrida states that all language consists of differences (Derrida, 278).  Ideas are like units of language in that they are generated by difference. They have identities or presences only by differing from other things. Locke thought that what we know is only our ideas and their relationships to one another (Locke, 814, 815).  This relates to Derrida's belief that everything in existence is relationally connected (Derrida, 278). Everything is perceived in terms of its differences to other things, therefore, everything is connected. There is no such thing as a pure identity because every identity is the product of differentiation. These differences play a role in language, speech, and the exchange between language and speech (Derrida, 286).

Derrida argued that "every day" language is not innocent or neutral and that all language carries presuppositions.  This reminded me of Locke's imperfections of language and his argument about words having no real meaning and simply being noise without the ideas they are supposed to represent (Locke, 825). Derrida also stated that there is no such thing as phonetic writing which could, once again, be compared to Locke's idea of words having no inherent meaning without signification. Derrida held that language ̶  especially written language ̶  cannot escape the built-in biases of the cultural history that produced it (Herrick, 253) Locke also took note of these biases from culture to culture and age to age which he brought up in his tenth proposition which discussed the unavoidable obscurity in ancient authors and the trouble with translating words from one language to another (Locke, 824). Different cultures across history apply different connotations, figures of speech, biases, tempers, and ornaments to their speech.

While many comparisons can be made between Locke and Derrida, they vastly differ in other aspects of their theories. Locke is considered by many to be a rationalist while Derrida undermines rationalism. Derrida also believed that speech comes before language because speech is necessary for language to be established (Derrida, 286). Locke did not get this far in his essay, though he did come to the conclusion that ideas have to come before words or language, which I think is something Derrida would agree with. According to herrick, Derrida did not see language simply as a system of signifying words, but rather as "a system of relations and oppositions" that must be continually defined (Herick, 255) while Locke saw words as signifiers of ideas.

Beyond Locke, I was also able to make some connections between Derrida and Lakoff and Johnson. Derrida argues that writing influences the way we think, similar to the way Lakoff and Johnson believe metaphors influence the way we speak and think. In basic terms, Lakoff, Johnson, and Deridda all believe that things define themselves in terms of other things. As Herrick put it, "[Derrida's] insight suggests that language and discourse contain embedded structures that reveal the ways in which our thinking is directed by the very terms we use to communicate, " (Herrick, 256). Meanwhile, Lakoff and Johnson theorized that metaphors contribute to "how we perceive, how we think, and what we do," down to the most minute details of everyday life and language.  

This same concept runs through Derrida's explanation of "differance." Throughout his essay, Derrida provides many different definitions of differance. He insists that it is not a word or concept, nor is it active or passive (Derrida, 279, 284). It is described as sameness which is not identical, the interposition of delay, the interval of a spacing and temporalizing that puts off until later what is presently denied, the possible that is presently impossible, the origin or production of differences, and the differences between differences (Derrida, 279). He differentiates differance from difference (which he defines as distinction, inequality, or discernability) so that he can explain how he came up with the word differance (not that he considers it a word, per se). He calls his term differance to make an example out of it because it is one letter away from difference and pronounced the same, but it is different from difference, making it a meta term because it is effectively an example of itself (Derrida, 280).

This is also an example of how text governs talk because even when we understand that difference with an e and differance with an a are different words, we understand them in terms of how they are spelled even when they are spoken aloud (Derrida, 281). This leads back into Lakoff and Johnson because they discuss how concepts govern our every day functioning including how we write, talk, and think. Their theory of how we live by metaphors is backed up by the several examples they provide including the fact that we think of time in terms of money and arguments in terms of war. Everything being thought of in terms of something else is essentially the basis of Derrida's argument about differance.

-Kayla Goldstein