The document discusses Derrida's deconstructionist view of language. Some key points: 1) Deconstruction holds that language is ambiguous and unstable rather than a clear tool of communication, as meanings can slip and change based on emphasis, tone, and context. 2) The meanings of words and phrases are not fixed but rather fluid and dynamic, with any signifier able to reference multiple signifieds. 3) For deconstruction, literature similarly consists of overlapping and conflicting meanings that are undecidable, as different readers will derive various interpretations from a text.

1. By
Ingrid- Melody
English Letters, Universitas Ma Chung

2. Deconstruction’s view of language
(Derrida)
‘language is not the reliable tool of
communication…’

3. Deconstruction’s theory of language
based on the belief that language is much more
slippery and ambiguous.
e.g. (old saying)
Time flies like an arrow = Times passed quickly.
Time = noun
flies = verb
like an arrow = adv. clause

4. e.g. (additional meanings 1)
Time flies like an arrow = Get out your stopwatch
and time the speed of flies as you’d time an
arrow’s flight.
Time = verb
flies = obj.
like an arrow = adv. clause

5. e.g. (additional meanings 2)
Time flies like an arrow = Time flies are fond of
arrows (or at least of one particular arrow).
Time flies = noun
like = verb
an arrow = obj.

6. Slippery quality of language
• changes in tone of voice and emphasis
• meaning changes dramatically

7. e.g.

8. The formula of basic element of
communication

9. Word as linguistic sign
e.g.
Picture a person standing in an open field
pointing to the only tree in sight.
signifiers (single) = this tree is big
signified (clear) = only one tree

10. Communication is such a complicated
and uncertain thing
• deconstruction look at the sentence’s
ambiguities, even when the sentence seems, at
first glance, as clear and specific.
• any given signifier can refer to any number of
signifieds at any given moment.

11. Language for deconstruction
• language consists only of chains of signifiers.
• language is nonreferential because it refers to the play
of signifiers of which language itself consist.
• language is what forms us and there is no way to get
beyond it.
• language is wholly ideological
• language is ‘ground of being’
• language has implications for subjectivity (human
being)

12. The important characteristics in
language
• its play of signifiers continually defers, or
postpones, meaning.
• the meaning seems to have the result of the
differences by which we distinguish one signifier
from another.

13. Binary opposition hierarchies
• the pair is always privileged, or considered
superior to the other.
• examine the ways which two members of the
opposition share some things in common.

14. Deconstruction as poststructuralist
theory
• it emerged in the wake of structuralism’s
popularity
• it constitutes a reaction against structuralism’s
orderly vision of language and human
experience.

15. Deconstructing Literature

16. The three main points we’ve discussed:
For deconstruction,
1. Language is dynamic, ambiguous, and unstable,
continually disseminating
2. Existence has no center, no stable meaning, no
fixed ground
3. Human being are fragmented battlefields for
competing ideologies whose only “identities”
are the ones we invent and choose to believe.

17. So…
For deconstruction, literature is as dynamic,
ambiguous, and unstable as the language
of which it is composed.
Literary text, like all texts, consist of a
multiplicity of overlapping, conflicting
meanings in dynamic, fluid relation to
one another and to us.

18. There are two reasons to deconstruct
literature:
1. to reveal the text’s undecidability and/or
2. to reveal the complex operations of the
ideologies of which the text is constructed.

19. • Deconstructive critics believe meaning in literature
is created during the act of reading a text.
• It is precisely while the reader is reading that
moments of meaning are created, but inevitably
give way to even more meanings, each new
reading creating its own unique meaning ad
infinitum.
• This is why Tyson says art and literature is "a
seething cauldron of meanings in flux," because
there can be a large range of meanings within a
text therefore the ultimate meaning is undecidable.

20. Undecidability means that reader and text
alike are inextricably bound within
language’s dissemination of meanings.
That is, reader and text are interwoven
threads in the perpetually working loom
of language

21. How can we prove undecidability:
1. note all the various interpretations- of characters,
events, images, and so on- the text seems to offer;
2. show the ways in which these interpretations
conflict with one another;
3. show how these conflicts produce still more
interpretations, which produce still more
conflicts, which produce still more
interpretations;
4. use steps 1, 2, 3, to argue for the text’s
“undecidability”

22. The following two questions summarize the
two deconstructive approaches discussed
above:
1. How we can use the various conflicting
interpretations a text produces (the “play of
meanings”) or find the various ways in
which the text doesn’t answer the questions
it seems to answer, to demonstrate the
instability of language and the
undecidability of meaning?

23. 2. What ideology does the text seem to
promote-what is its main theme-and how
does conflicting evidence in the text show
the limitations of that ideology?
We can usually discover a text’s overt
ideological project by finding the binary
opposition(S) that structure the text’s main
theme(s).

24. • Keep in mind that not all deconstructive critics will
interpret the same work in the same way, even if they
focus on the same ideological projects in the text.
• As in every yield, even expert practitioners disagree.
Our goal is to use deconstruction to help enrich our
reading of literary text, to help us see some important
ideas they illustrate that we might not have seen so
clearly or so deeply without deconstruction, and to help
us see the ways in which language blinds us to the
ideologies it embodies.

25. • As we noted earlier, because deconstruction helps us understand
the hidden operations of ideology, it can be a useful tool for any
critic interested in examining the oppressive role ideology can
play in our lives.

26. Questions for further practice
1. What does this ideological conflict suggest about the difficulties
involved in the attempt to avoid stereotypes or about the
difficulty any oppressed group might have asserting its own
identity in the face of prejudice?
2. How does Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” (1898) forward its
theme of the importance of sexual fulfillment for women,
which seems to be the story’s overt ideological project? How
does the text’s use of nature imagery and the standard fairy-tale
happy ending both promote and undermine this project? What
does this ideological conflict imply about the story’s attempt to
transcend the nineteenth-century social values of the culture it
represents?

27. 3. How might we account for the apparent failure of the
American public to recognize this very different
reading of the poem?
4. Then show how the novel deconstructs this ideological
project by finding, in the text, the ways in which nature
does not live up to this definition. Speculate on the
reasons why this ideological conflict is present in this
text.
5. How might William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy”
(1789) provide an example of deconstruction’s notion
of undecidability? Specifically, how does the poem
seem to promote the mutually exclusive themes of
racial equality, the superiority of white people to black
people, and the superiority of black people to white
people? What are the implications of this apparent
ideological conflict?

29. sources
• Tyson, Lois – Critical Theory Today.pdf