Meaning, then, comes from understanding what a thing IS NOT rather than from knowing in any kind of ontological sense what a thing IS.

English speakers construct meaning by distinguishing between tree and treat and trek as well as between tree and bush and flower.

Meaning, then, comes from understanding what a thing IS NOT rather than from knowing in any kind of ontological sense what a thing IS.

Meaning, then, comes from understanding what a thing IS NOT rather than from knowing in any kind of ontological sense what a thing IS. Meaning is constructed through difference, particularly through binary pairs (man/woman, good/evil). There is no absolute Platonic ideal "out there" to anchor meaning. There is no truth that is not constructed. There is nothing outside language. Language speaks (through) us. Language is thus a system of signs or a semiotic system, but merely one of many, all of which construct meaning, which does not exist outside the semiotic system.


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He argued that the relationship between the spoken word (signifier) and object (signified) is arbitrary and that meaning comes through the relationship between signs, which are for Saussure the union of signified and signifier. So the word "tree" means  by custom only and not through any intrinsic relationship between the sound and the thing. That's why both "arbol" and "tree" can both signify the same signified.