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(1997) Twentieth-century literary theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
However great the diversity, the irregularity, the disparity even of current research in semiotics, it is possible to speak of a specifically semiotic discovery. What semiotics has discovered in studying "ideologies' (myths, rituals, moral codes, arts, etc.) as sign-systems is that the law governing or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e., that it is articulated like a language. Every social practice, as well as being the object of external (economic, political, etc.) determinants, is also determined by a set of signifying rules, by virtue of the fact that there is present an order of language; that this language has a double articulation (signifier/signified), that this duality stands in an arbitrary relation to the referent; and that all social functioning is marked by the split between referent and symbolic and by the shift from signified to signifier coextensive with it.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-25934-2_26
Full citation:
Newton, K. M. (1997)., Julia Kristeva: "The system and the speaking subject", in K. M. Newton (ed.), Twentieth-century literary theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 124-129.