Floating signifier

A floating signifier also sometimes covered to as an empty signifier, but Ernesto Laclau separates both theory is the signifier without the referent in semiotics in addition to discourse analysis, such(a) as a word that points to no actual object as well as has no agreed upon meaning. The term open signifier is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's manner to "resist the constitution of all unitary meaning" thus enabling its ability to cover open to different meanings in different contexts.

Uses in addition to examples

The Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory provides the usage example that "Fredric Jameson suggests that the shark in the Jaws series of films is an empty signifier because it is for susceptible to multiple and even contradictory interpretations, suggesting that it does not take a particular meaning itself, but functions primarily as a vehicle for absorbing meanings that viewers want to impose upon it."

The picture of floating signifiers can be applied to concepts such(a) as race and gender, as a way of asserting that the word is more concrete than the concept it describes, where the concept may not be stable, but the word is. this is the often applied to non-linguistic signs, such as the example of the Rorschach inkblot test. Roland Barthes, while non using the term "floating signifier" explicitly, remanded specifically to non-linguistic signs as being so open to interpretation that they constituted a "floating chain of signifieds." For example, the American flag is at one time a signifier of the geographical nation it represents, of patriotism to that nation, of the nation's set of governmental policies or of the ideologies associated with it such as liberty. Depending on the context, the flag can carry either positive or negative significance.

The concept is used in some more textual forms of postmodernism, which rejects the strict anchoring of specific signifiers to particular signifieds and argues against the concept that there are anydeterminable meanings to words or signs. For example, Jacques Derrida speaks of the "freeplay" of signifiers: arguing that they are not constant to their signifieds but an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. beyond themselves to other signifiers in an "indefinite referral of signifier to signified."