To complicate matters even further, there is no fixed distinction between signifiers and signifieds either. If you want to know the meaning (or signified) of a signifier, you can look it up in the dictionary; but all you will find will be yet more signifiers, whose signifieds you can in turn look up, and so . on. The process we are discussing is not only in theory infinite but somehow circular: signifiers keep transforming into signifieds and vice versa, and you will never arrive at a final signified which is not a signifier in itself. If structuralism divided the sign from the referent, this kind of thinking often known as 'post-structuralism' goes a step further: it divides the signifier from the signified.
(页码111). 引自 Post-structuralism
a little strange, does this paragraph indicate that we understand concepts by concepts and the process of cognition involves a necessary transformation from feelings( maybe an essential part of signified) to parole?
Another way of putting what we have just said is that meaning is not immediately present in a sign. Since the meaning of a sign is a matter of what the sign is not, its meaning is always in some sense absent from it too. Meaning, if you like, is scattered or dispersed along the whole chain of signifiers: it cannot be easily nailed down, it is never fully present in anyone sign alone, but is rather a kind of constant flickering of presence and absence together. (页码111).引自 Post-structuralism