Différance

Derrida coined a word that cannot be heard. Différance, spelled with an a where French demands an e, is pronounced identically to the ordinary word différence. The difference exists only in writing, inaudible in speech—a provocation aimed at the tradition that privileged the spoken word, since here is a difference the living voice cannot carry and only the mark can register. Built from the French verb différer, which means both to differ and to defer, the word names the combined movement through which meaning is produced and perpetually postponed: produced by the differences between signs (no sign has positive content in itself, only the value conferred by its distinction from all the signs it is not), and deferred across the chain of signs (look up a word and you find more words; nowhere do you reach a meaning that is simply, luminously present and needs no further sign). The play of différance never arrives