The Hang-Up on Words

An organized system of verbal speech is what separates man from other primates and lesser species. Words create and shape our reality. They make or break us. Words are an imperfect reflection of their imperfect creators. Burke would say that because man is "rotten with perfection" he devotes his life (as Derrida and Locke do) in vain to criticizing imperfect systems and attempting to better them. Locke and Derrida are both hypercritical of our flawed system of language. In many ways they make similar arguments but in many ways I believe Locke would reject Derrida's creation of "differance."



Locke's argument, albeit dense and dated, is a hundred times more clear than Derrida's. Language is imperfect and words can never capture the entirety of ideas that are inherently complex and multifaceted (815). Words can represent a multitude of ideas, especially in people's individual minds.
The meaning of a word and the real essence of the idea are not exactly the same and it is difficult to understand ideas that have no standard in nature (Locke 818). Then we reach Derrida and things become deep and transient.

Derrida creates a term "differance" that he uses to explain the nature of words and language. Differance is a combination of difference and deferral (279). This relates to the opposition created by unlike words and their interaction through time and space. Derrida and Locke would agree that words can never fully represent the ideas that they stand for and that it is nearly impossible to engender the same idea in the mind of the speaker and the mind of the hearer. Derrida argues that the deferral in difference means the span of time and space that it takes to fully explain a word's meaning. When trying to illustrate an idea words are used to explain the thing but it is never sufficient to use one word so you begin to defer to other words that are different from each other until you arrive upon some explanation that is insufficiently sufficient (because words can never fully explain ideas).

So differance is actually a completely fictionalized concept that Derrida argues comes even before the creation of man (what?). Differance is non-existent and non-essential (282). According to Derrida, "It [differance] refers to this whole complex of meanings not only when it is supported by a language or interpretive context (like any signification), but it already does so somehow of itself" (283).

I will backtrack and say that perhaps Locke would not wholly reject Derrida's imagination of "differance" but he would say that Derrida abuses language. Under Locke's understanding of the best use of language you must be clear and consistent. Locke says that words are confused when they stand for a multitude of ideas and have no real essence (818). Derrida directly claims that differance in and of itself has no essence and does not exist (no standard in nature). The common person when reading Derrida would only become more confused and lost. Derrida's language begins to fail when it "makes use of fantastical imaginations" (827). I would have to argue that creating a word out of nowhere (differance apparently pre-exists anything) would definitely lead to failure on these terms.

At what point does the post-modernist ideal of questioning everything become too exhaustive? At what point does it cause us to question the things we've already accepted as fact and backtrack in our own minds? Criticizing words is understandable because it is the foundation on which we create our reality. However, the elusiveness of differance definitely has no civil use and has a questionable philosophical use as well.