Origin and Definition
Claude Lévi-Strauss originated this term, where he identifies terms like mana (magical mystical substance of which the magic is formed), or oomph (American slang term for flavor in the figurative sense) "to represent an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning". Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified." As such a "floating siginifier" may "mean different things to different people: they may stand for many or even any signifieds; they may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean." Such a floating signifier - which is said to possess "symbolic value zero" - results necessary to "allow symbolic thought to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it".
Read more about this topic: Floating Signifier
Famous quotes containing the words origin and/or definition:
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)