Kristeva understands the term “semiotic” in “its Greek sense,” that is, “a distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace, figuration” (25). “Because the subject is always both semiotic and symbolic, no signifying system he produces can be either ‘exclusively’ semiotic or ‘exclusively’ symbolic, and is instead necessarily marked by an indebtedness to both” (24). On the other hand, there are nonverbal signifying systems that are constructed exclusively on the basis of the semiotic (music, for example” (23-4).

“What we call significance is precisely this unlimited and unbounded generating process, this unceasing operation of the drives toward, in, and through language toward, in, and through the exchange system and its protagonists-the subject and its institutions” (17).īriefly, Kristeva identifies two modalities of the same signifying process: “the semiotic” and “the symbolic.” These modalities “are inseparable within the signifying process that constitutes language, and the dialectic between them determines the type of discourse (narrative, metalanguage, theory, poetry, etc.) involved in other words, so-called ‘natural’ language allows for different modes of articulation of the semiotic and the symbolic.

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