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

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

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

Difference [...] remains suspended between the two French verbs 'to differ' and 'to defer', both of which contribute to its textual force but neither of which can fully capture its meaning

the harmonic or contrapuntal, which typified the supposed weakness and decadence of French tradition

The deadlocked prolixity of Rousseau's text is also a lesson

the point at which thought encounters an aporia--or self-engendered paradox--beyond which it cannot press

Structuralism and phenomenology are locked in a reciprocal aporia from which neither can emerge with its principles intact, but on which both depend for their moments of maximum insight.

no doubt exercised some baleful influence

'Hermeneutics', as Heidegger conceived it, was the founding philosophy of all interpretation, an attempt to provide the human sciences with a self-understanding adequate to their task