Locke's "Language" and Derrida's "Differance"

Once I read Derrida’s argument about how we communicate everyday with language, I realized that he was explaining the distinction of how the terms “differ” and “defer” are interpreted or used when we (the audience/ readers) are presented with it and using it. Derrida states how, “written language, cannot escape the built- in biases of the cultural history that produced it,” (253). He believed language to be a “system of relations and oppositions,” (255), that should, even in this modern day, continue to be defended. As we know language is based, not just on the interpretation or meaning of words, but on the meaning behind words and how they can be used in a different way. For instance, Derrida claims how meaning is, “always the product of a restless play within language that cannot be fixed or pinned down for the purposes of conceptual definition,” (255).

How does the reader see meaning become interpreted differently based on how a writer defines terms in a way that is not similar to the authors original meaning? Can language fail to have meaning for the reader based on how it is communicated or used? Locke states in his essay titled An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,that "when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the mind of the speaker,” (817). Therefore, communication is either failing to be comprehended on the listeners end because of the speaker, or the speaker is not being clear with what they are trying to say to the listener. However, when we look back at what Derrida is saying about how, “meanings are not fixed, and that constructing meaning involves an ongoing process of social negotiation,” he says how language and discourse allows our thinking to be directed by the way we use words to communicate (256).  

Derrida’s distinction between the terms “differ” and “defer” are very interesting to observe. In Rivkin/Ryan essay on Structuralism and Deconstruction, it states how Derrida meant that the term differance, which he spells with a lower case “a”, is actually, “a process of deferment in time and difference in space,” (258). The essay also explains how to understand the meaning of the term “differ” which says how, “When you point to a presence (of a thing or of an idea), you are referred to some other from which it differs,” (258). For example, in the essay we see how the two terms “differ” and “defer” are defined based on how they coexist with each other, “…the concept of culture differed and deferred. It is the differance of culture,” (258). The essay goes back to referring to how the significance on how language from thought to reality replaces one thing from another.This helps us see that Derrida needed Locke’s theories to construct his argument on language.

The text makes it seem as if Derrida was obsessed with the concept that language has no concept. That the terms “differ” and “defer” are significant to the word difference, it states how “one thing refers to another in a relationship of difference, allows the presence of ideas and objects to come into being in the first place,” (259). Both terms correlate with each other and with difference as being represented as "the middle man" of the word. We see in Lockes essay that he believes this to be wrong as he states how true knowledge of individuals when used, is more involved with words of knowledge not ideas or passion. It says how, “all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment” (827). 

-Daphne Britt

**Comment for Sara Kathryn Blog Post**:
Your explanation on how Derrida believed language to be more of a form, A ‘form’ is something external that shapes material into a particular identity or substance” (Derrida, 278), really helped me have a clearer understanding of his meaning for language. He also states how language is a, “system of relations and oppositions...standardized meanings... such as mind and body, form and content, nature and culture and faith and reason,"(255). His argument about language is very complex and confusing, but your explanation allowed me to see how he defines language.