In Emancipation(s), Ernesto Laclau frames the empty signifier in the context of social interactions. Such a floating signifier-which is said to possess "symbolic value zero"-necessarily results to "allow symbolic thought to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it". As such a "floating signifier" 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". Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified". DefinitionĬlaude 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". A floating signifier (also known as an empty signifier) is a signifier without a referent in semiotics and discourse analysis, such as a word that points to no actual object and has no agreed upon meaning.
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