“‘Transcendental signified’: a thing that has an existence independent of the word that describes it,” (Moran 80). In my high school class, Saussure was briefly discussed in order to understand how words relate to the thing itself and usually they could be mutually exclusive. The differentiation between the sign and the signified is one that goes unnoticed. A thing exists as it’s own and our words apply meaning to said thing, so wouldn’t this mean that Derrida’s transcendental signified exists for every thing in this world? What separates the regular signified thing from a transcendental signified? If we think of it this way, you can also argue that signifiers/words are inherently intertextual. Every past experience someone has with a word is going to influence the meaning of that word. This is how words gain negative or positive connotations, through the collective intertextuality that influences its new meaning. This is ever changing as well, over time words represent new things and take new meanings, so what is a word? How do words exist if their definitions are always changing? Precisely because they don’t change quickly enough.
While one person may have an experience with a certain word, another person may not agree. The only way for a word’s definition to be changed or modified would be if it was agreed upon by a general audience. Especially if this is related to slang or vernacular, and even more especially if one is outside the culture of said slang/vernacular.
So, let’s take this deeper. If words are inherently intertextual, then this makes texts themselves even more complexly intertextual than originally thought. According to Moran, a text is “a way of ordering human experience, communicating ideas and knowledge about the world to ourselves and others,” (78). This is apparent in Jean Toomer’s Cane. It’s easy to assume that all the texts within Cane are intertwined or purposely connected, but realistically they were all written separately from each other. However, because of intertextuality and interdisciplinarity, these texts are already connected just through the words used. No matter how far a part these stories were written from one another, they are all together a whole not just because of the similar subject matter but also due to the meanings we have applied to the words used. Interpretation exists solely upon the interdisciplinarity of words, ideas, and theories. Without this flow between subject matter and word choice, interpretation would be restricted to a specific ideal and would be contained within a narrow-minded box. Interdisciplinarity is the reason this class, and other English classes alike, can exist… and is the reason any class needing interpretative* skills exists as well.
*Interpretative itself is an example of a word that can be considered exclusive from the actual thing it represents. In spelling this, there are two ways: interpretative and interpretive, though they both mean the same thing. These signifiers, while different, are the same. An example of an opposing view would be the words illusion, allusion, and elusion; they all sound the same, but represent different things. Does this mean interpretation is a transcendental signified?