Signs

Signifier= The word or image
Signified= The concept
Signifier + Signified = The Sign

Ferdinand de Saussure's two most famous theses are often termed his 'doctrines': of the 'arbitrariness' of the sign and of the a priori status of language vis-a-vis thought. Redefining 'word' not as the apparently solid entity that it is ordinarily considered to be but as composed, instead, of two elementary functions-the signifier or 'acoustic image,' by which sound is transmitted from speaker to hearer; and the signified, or 'conceptual image,' by which the sound-image is translated into a mental concept . . . Dramatically revising Kantian idealism, Saussure argues that language, rather than being a mere tool for expressing ideas, precedes all thought.

John Carlos Rowe, 'Structure' in Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, (eds), Critical Terms for Literary Study, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 29.


In our age there is an even greater crisis of representation. There is a sense that the reader of a text is caught within an endless chain of verbal signs; the meaning of a sign is to be found only in its 'difference' from others, and as what is signified becomes a signifier in its turn, final meaning is perpetually postponed.

Paul S. Fiddes, "The Quest for a Place Which Is 'Not-a-Place': The Hiddenness of God and the Presence of God," Silence and the Word, ed. Oliver Davies & Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 39.