DERRIDA-HUSSERL: TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE

The question of the nature and functioning of language is distinguished by a lack of clear boundaries.  This is because language claims to represent the world.  We take its signs as referring to items in the world.  How do they accomplish this reference?  To answer this question, it seems that we cannot limit our inquiry to the signs themselves.  The question of how they achieve this reference merges with the question of how we come in contact with the world.  How do we grasp the objects referred to by linguistic signs?  What is the role of language in this grasp?  Are linguistic signs shaped by the world, drawing their meanings from its different objects, or do such signs shape these meanings?  Are we to take language as an openness to what is beyond itself--that is, the world?  An alternate view is that we are sealed within language.  We cannot escape its determination of meaning.