Where the word remains known as the whole sign, the unification of concept and sound-image becomes the unification of the signified and the signifier respectively. According to Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), "Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words." Jean-Jacques Rousseau similarly states, "Writing is nothing but the representation of speech it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object." Saussure įerdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), it is claimed by Derrida, follows this logocentric line of thought in the development of his linguistic sign and its terminology. This notion that the written word is a sign of a sign has a long history in Western thought. In this framework, speech has seemed the immediate manifestation or presence of thought, while writing, which operates in the absence of the speaker, has been treated as an artificial and derivative representation of speech, a potentially misleading sign of a sign (p. Signs or representations, in this view, are but a way to get at reality, truth, or ideas, and they should be as transparent as possible they should not get in the way, should not affect or infect the thought or truth they represent. Traditionally, Western philosophy has distinguished "reality" from "appearance," things themselves from representations of them, and thought from signs that express it. Jonathan Culler in his book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction says: Writing is a "sign of a sign" and, therefore, is basically phonetic. It follows, therefore, that speech is the primary form of language and that writing is secondary, representative, and, importantly, outside of speech. Logocentric linguistics proposes that "the immediate and privileged unity which founds significance and the acts of language is the articulated unity of sound and sense within the phonic." As the science of language, linguistics is a science by way of this semiotic phonology. With the logos as the site of a representational unity, linguistics dissects the structure of the logos further and establishes the sound of the word, coupled with the sense of the word, as the original and ideal location of metaphysical significance.
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