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It is not a question, he repeats, of rejecting the entire Saussurian project or denying its historical significance

the 'diachronic' methods of historical research and speculation which had dominated nineteenth-century linguistics

Language is in this sense diacritical, or dependent on a structured economy of differences which allows a relatively small range of linguistic elements to signify a vast repertoire of negotiable meanings

what de Man calls the 'dialectical interplay' set up between text and interpreter

The 'hermeneutic' tradition, on the other hand, takes account of the interpreter's puzzles and perplexities by including them within the terms of a full and generous response.