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Coined by Jacques Derrida in his Of Grammatology , logocentrism refers to the tendency in western civilization to privilege the linguistic signifier (a spoken or written word) over the signified (the thing to which the word refers). The importance of the term resides in Derrida's critique of the philosophical tendency in western civilization to be logocentric. Derrida asserts that western discourses generally tend to impose hierarchies of power by defining certain concepts against necessarily subordinated alternatives. Extending this critique to logocentrism, Derrida notes the tendency in western philosophy and semiotics to value the signifier as opposed to the thing it signifies in what he calls a “metaphysics of presence.” In Of Grammatology , Derrida systematically problematizes much of Ferdinand de Saussure's work in semiotics. On many points, Derrida employs Saussure's work as a point of departure. For example, Saussure maintains that the signified does not inherently indicate the nature of the signifier – for example, there is nothing about the nature of a table that requires it to be called such – but rather that signifiers create a linguistic system of signs that reference each other. Likewise, Derrida agrees that linguistic systems encode certain value systems. However, Derrida rejects the dyadic model of signs that Saussure develops, wherein Saussure focuses attention ... log in or subscribe to read full text