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How To Use Signifier In A Sentence

  • the signifier is linked to the signified
  • Whether we take the signified or the signifier, Saussure argues, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.
  • His essay ‘Our America’ sought to contest the cultural and linguistic destiny of America as a signifier.
  • Derrida insisted that the very way in which language functions, that is, signification, necessitates an unbridgeable gap between the signifier and the signified.
  • In so far as the idyll is a signifier to which a real world referent can be attached -- pre-industrial culture, medieval society, etc. -- we might be dubious of a restoration that is essentially an act of validation. Narrative Grammars
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  • The Lacanian opus is built upon the power of the signifier, the capacity of the noun, not just to represent, but also to signify various representations that can be in relation with one another, e.g. through metaphors and metonyms.
  • What worries me is that the designed world might become so hermetic and the signifiers of functionality so appropriated that the opportunity for that fascination never arises.
  • The I of her narrative is a masquerade, and her identity is never more than a metonym for an endless chain of signifiers.
  • But I don't think that there need be an intrinsic link of signifier to signified for a language to be used in nonarbitrary ways. Binary Oppositions: Good or Bad?
  • It should not come as a surprise to learn that social signifiers play a major role in his new book, tentatively entitled “Sociable design. †He lives at jnd. org. JND.org
  • Can the enthusiast for indeterminacy, ambiguity, undecidability, and the endless play of signifiers be held to conventional standards of clarity? The Times Literary Supplement
  • The signifiers are those of casual dining: the paper tablecloth is also the menu, and there are funkily tiny wineglasses already set up. Restaurant: Polpetto, London W1
  • There is a perpetual shift in the relationship between signifiers and signifieds.
  • Like Carter, Ruth performs signifiers of whiteness: she wears light colored clothing and eschews black vernacular English.
  • The intimacy of signifier and signified in the iconic sign negates the distance which defines phonetic language.
  • Post-structuralist: By rejecting neo-Enlightment notions that privilege "light," we can conceptualize the relationship between optically-oriented envisioning and those signifiers that address interpretations of post-colonial modernism as an established text within the framework of which, intertextually, we are lead to reject any causal relationship between the operands and the motivators. A Bland and Deadly Courtesy
  • Since the binding of signifier to signified is non-essential — such that a cigar may just be a cigar — and is often even idiolectic and idiosyncratic — such that what is significant to the advocate, A, may be significant only to them — the conventionality of semantic associations must be taken as a standard of approximate objectivity in order to distinguish the uncoupling of conventionally-accepted pairings (as, say, where the advocate is highlighting a well-established symbolism of anti-Semitism) from the rejection of idiosyncratically-asserted couplings (as, say, where the advocate is reading a pepper mill as a phallic symbol); the former constitutes insignification while the latter is simply a denial of significance. Arguing With Geeks 8
  • But all thoroughbred geldings are signifiers.
  • The illusions of the me are belied by the signifiers that represent aspects of lived experience the me has had to deny.
  • What gives the sign its linguistic value is the system of differences, on the one hand between signifiers, on the other be - tween signifieds (or significata, some writers in English preferring “significatum” to “signified” as a noun). STRUCTURALISM
  • The illusions of the me are belied by the signifiers that represent aspects of lived experience the me has had to deny.
  • The principal concern is the preposition ‘on’ as a signifier of contact with a surface - especially an upper surface.
  • On the contrary, the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary.
  • In this tryptic, I find the lampoonery of the physical deformation inherent to both the slight-statured, fat-footed Frodo and the EPO-swilling, peglegged pirate in the first 2 images to be apt signifiers of his poorly cobbled performances and subsequent attempts at mea culpa. The BSNYC Absentee Art Exhibition (Part II)
  • Courtney's status as godhead shines through in the simple reason that personal contact with deities can be damaging to mere mortals, but their actions viewed at a remove provide free-floating signifiers.
  • Linguists might call the monster on the ice-floes a floating signifier, a lexeme whose meaning varies contextually.
  • Material signifiers gain aria-like ascendancy over immaterial meanings. Captivation and Liberty in Wordsworth's Poems on Music
  • Here a pearl-gray homburg is a signifier of dapperness, there a totem of an affair.
  • In such a system, visual and auditory linguistic signifiers are in changing, unstable correspondence with the concepts they stand for.
  • Return of the MacGuffin: Iran and Nuclear Weapons (K-punk) “A MacGuffin (sometimes spelt McGuffin or Magoffin), an empty master-signifier, is a now-ubiquitous plot device or catalyst that holds no meaning or purpose of its own except to motivate the players or characters and advance a narrative or story.” Google MLK in Black and White
  • Yet it remains clear that for the objectives sketched in the article, even much more extensive and sophisticated models of signifiers than those elaborated in structural phonology (intonation, graphology and graphetics, prosody, etc.) would still fail to provide any meaningful semantic coherence and unity.
  • May 22nd, 2007 at 11: 54 am on a smaller level, the inanity of referring to “the enemy” in iraq always catches my attention: it’s a signifier that the scriber is a total idiot. Matthew Yglesias » Is John Hood a Robot?
  • The ‘toilet’ and ‘fashion’ definitions could similarly be tied into this Gnostic interpretation, being signifiers of both the impurity and transitory nature of material reality.
  • This country's chief signifier is our staggering capacity to isolate ourselves from the effects of our political and lifestyle choices. Politics and Literature
  • Pantages or someplace, and she'd be draped in fur and wearing diamond-studded sunglasses (signifiers of phoniness in other words) and would say how much she wanted to thank "all the little people" out there without whom her career would have been impossible. Blogposts | guardian.co.uk
  • But Alfric is the extreme signifier of Roman Catholicism's violent signified, whereas the novel's various misguided Protestants merely signify postlapsarian man's natural depravity. The Little Professor:
  • Phonology was of linguistic interest only to the extent that sound patterns functioned as signifiers.
  • The role of ceramics in building chronologies and as signifiers of cultural similarity single this artifact category out as a prime focus for archaeometric research.
  • Are we always aiming to flense the rich complexity of connotation and find the bare bones, to parse structures of signifiers into structures of signifieds? Archive 2009-07-01
  • So brilliantly scripted, excellent one liners, and packed with subtle cues and signifiers, from men in chunky sweaters to Elvis Christmas songs. The Long Kiss Goodnight « We Don't Count Your Own Visits To Your Blog
  • If we presume the signifier is the signified we fall into the trap of logocentrism. An Exploration into an Integral Approach to Knowledge
  • The correlatives of the signifieds aroused by such signifiers are emotional states; they remain private to each hearer and cannot be compared with each other, and so consensus cannot be achieved.
  • Merimee's Carmen contributed to the renewed fascination with Spanish Gypsies, mixing dancers, smugglers, bullfighters, and gitanas as interchangeable signifiers of oriental Spain.
  • The floating signifier "Communist" -- which, back in the day, could mean anything from supporting fluoridation of water, promoting rock music or even throwing a beanball* -- has now been replaced with "anti-Semite," but the thuggish tactics of government remain unchanged. Archive 2009-12-01
  • He does not stoop to deny the charge against the president, instead he points out the signifier of the true moralist: the man who tears up the constitution when politically expedient.
  • Nor so delightful, because while a handclap in music is useful for many things, it is almost always a signifier of enthusiasm, of ebullience, of? dare I say it? happiness. Readers recommend: Songs with handclaps ? the results
  • Not only does this polysemy make it an enigmatic signifier, but the computer-perfected entasis makes it a good example of propositional beauty - the central planned skyscraper with elegant double curves shooting to the sky.
  • The act of ablution is sympathetic magic, based as it is on the "like produces like" principle, the principle that action on the signifier (physical dirt) is, or results in, parallel action on the signified (spiritual sin). The Stain of Sin
  • The human animal monster, as the traditional signifier of sin and inhumanity, reflects the internalisation of the myth of the Fall of Man.
  • They give the materiality of the signifiers a formal structure we encounter in nonclassical theory. Thinking Singularity with Immanuel Kant and Paul de Man: Aesthetics, Epistemology, History and Politics
  • But is it not the case that literature supersedes history, as one of the ultimate signifiers in a universe literate in necessary layers of meanings?
  • At the level of what Barthes calls the ‘vestimentary code’, the code of what is fashionable, prints and piping are signifiers whose signified is fashionable.
  • The author renders the word tradition into a signifier of doubtful intentions, a glyph whose meaning has yet to be ascertained.
  • The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary
  • I have reevaluated my collection of necklaces, most of them unworn, many of them gestures intended by my mother to fertilize the stunted signifiers of my femininity.
  • Their parallel arts of word and legend encompass the omniglot signifiers of religious, political, military, philosophical, technical rural, urban, economic, generational, and ethnic topographies.
  • Frequent use of public transportation, during a lifetime in a country where this is commonplace, has infused the artist's imagination with signs and signifiers, a moveable feast of doubledecker buses and coal-powered locomotives, which operates as something of a three-dimensional mapping system. Bill Bush: The Darker Side Of Human Folly: This Artweek.LA (Dec. 19-Jan. 1, 2012)
  • A subtler execution with the butterfly only a pattern of fracturing on the glass might have allowed the symbol to be read as synchronicity rather than Fate, a signifier projected by the hero as a crystallisation of his epiphany. Ethics and Enthusiasm
  • It is a naive mistake, however, to suppose that the Renaissance restored or reintegrated classical culture, or in any sense reunited classical signifiers with their classical signifieds.
  • The mechanism of ideological fantasy is made up of master signifier, transference, identification, etc.
  • Barthes declared that ' serious recourse to the nomenclature of signification ' was the mark of structuralism and advised interested readers to ' watch who uses signifier and signified, synchrony and diachrony.'
  • He was more interested in emancipating the dispossessed than in celebrating the body or floating the signifier. Literary Study
  • Constructed by a team of high-priced hitmakers led by Americana Authenticity Signifier Rick Rubin, "21" is informed, but never overwhelmed, by roots music: The booming opener "Rolling in the Deep" draws heavily from blues; "Rumour Has It" is set in a fictional universe where Dusty Springfield fronts the Ronettes; "One and Only" is an awe-inspiring gospel rave-up. Album review: Adele, "21"
  • In such societies, one's eccentric taste is always more likely to be construed as a threat to the community - as a signifier of disloyalty - than as an icon of aspiration.
  • It is a naive mistake, however, to suppose that the Renaissance restored or reintegrated classical culture, or in any sense reunited classical signifiers with their classical signifieds.
  • For a time, however, legal and cultural signifiers of status masked these similarities; these signifiers entered into the warp and woof of material interests and ideological needs.
  • The end of the signifier/signified dialectic which facilitates the accumulation of knowledge and of meaning, the linear syntagma of cumulative discourse. Jean Baudrillard
  • He focused, so to speak, on the pragmatics of the signifier rather than on the vicissitudes of the signified.
  • The fallacious translation of trope into signifier is symptomatically reiterated later in the chapter in the form of an atypical terminological mistake. Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man
  • For painters, naturalism was the greatest signifier of mortality, and Caravaggio was the greatest naturalist.
  • They are emergent, multivalent signifiers in search of an open interpretation, one related to the building task, the site and the language of the particular architecture.
  • There you'll be, a furious collection of primordial organelles focused like a coherent light machine on the hyperholistic sublimity of 'appliance' as a signifier of more than simply an instance of a particular hardware configuration, but as an aggregation of physical nature with the abstraction of 'applicabilty,'  more than just a word, but a magickal spell that conjures technology out of ecology. Whole Day Off
  • Punk motifs, in particular, recur again and again, but only as hollow signifiers on pre-slashed and distressed clothing bought from boutiques.
  • Taking its cue from structural linguistics, it will concentrate on the signifiers at the expense of the signifieds.
  • The resemblance between the signified and the signifier - the defining characteristic of an iconic sign - has to be a resemblance as perceived by someone.
  • Sometimes I worry that "narratologist" becomes a straw man, a signifier more for "dilletante humanist who knows shit about video games" rather than "practicioner of narratological methods of inquiry. Ye Olde Disciplinary Punch-and-Judy Show
  • They draw attention to contingent referents, the signifiers and the sign-systems that position subjects as such.
  • In language, a lone signifier would be an utterly meaningless sound or concatenation of sounds.
  • For Baudrillard, there is no action in the play of signifiers in the langue of advertising; in other words, what occurs in advertising is not language.
  • Shoes have an uneasy relationship with feminism, because of their role as sexual signifiers.
  • Women in film, thus, do not function as signifiers for a signified (a real woman) as sociological critics have assumed, but signifier and signified have been elided into a sign that represents something in the male unconscious.
  • However, since there is only one signifier of sexuality (the phallus), the Other signifier of the signifying chain must represent the absence of the phallus ( castration).
  • Digital scolds bemoan tweeting as the ultimate signifier of our busted attention spans, but old-timey newspapers used to run randomized factoidal gibberish like this by the yard. Chicago Reader
  • The connection between signifier and signified is loosened and exposed as arbitrary, allowing for alternative interpretations of the sense.
  • It is easy to see why drag kings might resort to sexist stereotypes; without aggression, dominance, or machismo, what signifiers can a performer use to communicate masculinity to the audience?
  • The signifier is the word itself, its sound and the actual sequence of its letters. Ravenna Michalsen: Listening To Matra Music
  • They are then more the implicit signifiers of his own subject position than they are his explicit analysis or representation of such contradictions.
  • Part of the attraction was the hope that a formal discipline which required one to name signifiers and signifieds would display convincingly the ideological contents of various activities.
  • The cinematic image is freed from its traditional image character through the exchangeability and simulation of its signifiers.
  • Children used to learn to read from primers that showed pictures of things with their names underneath, to teach them what the written signifier meant.
  • The use of confederate symbolism as a signifier of southern pride is just as purposeful an effort to use that pride to polarize people into supporting disgusting, reactionary politics in 2010 as it was in 1956. theAmericanist says: Matthew Yglesias » Pro-Slavery
  • A salutary leveling of Voice in writing, rooted deep in the currents of postmetaphysical philosophy — or otherwise the deconstruction of the transcendental Word in all its various mystifications — can rightly disenchant the file of the signifier without going so far as to ignore the phonemic enchainment linked by letters but not coterminous with those scripted increments. Phonemanography: Romantic to Victorian
  • A social signifier is one that is either created or interpreted by people or society, signifying social activity or appropriate social behavior. Why YouTube should support Creative Commons now | FactoryCity
  • Even if skin color were taken as a signifier for race, a metonym for some racial homunculus, all it would prove is a trope, not an index.
  • In Saussure's theory of linguistics, the signifier is the sound and the signified is the thought.
  • Les collègues de John se sont mis à l'appeler "la vieille dame de John Wagner", ce qui en anglais peut aussi signifier "la moitié de John Wagner", de sorte que John en vint à redouter de sérieux ennuis avec sa femme. Archive 2010-06-01
  • They had quarreled earlier, ostensibly about the signifier and the signified, and then Verdigris had tried to eat his glass.
  • Social meaning and communication derive from a variety of signs and signifiers.
  • The ideas behind the words, the signified beyond the signifier, is what really matters. Talking the talk
  • Simple signifiers like ‘milk and cookies,’ for example, represent cozy domesticity or traditional motherliness.
  • To put flesh on the image of God that is the church in nepantla, I want to point to some signifiers that I observed in the praxis of my own ministry while serving a parish in San Antonio several years ago.
  • The sign emerges at the conjunction of the signified and the signifier, both of which are in parole, or a language's concrete properties.
  • A potent feminine signifier, bustles exaggerate and prettify the rear without offering a conspicuous come-on.

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