the development of his linguistic sign and its terminology. Where the word remains known as the whole sign, the unification of concept and sound-image becomes the unification of the signified and the signifier respectively. The signifier is then composed of an indivisible sound and image whereby the graphic form of the sign is exterior. According to Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, "The linguistic object is not defined by the combination of the written word and the spoken word: the spoken form alone constitutes the object." Language has, he writes, "an oral tradition that is independent of writing." Derrida French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) in his book Of Grammatology responds in depth to what he believes is Saussure's logocentric argument. Derrida deconstructs the apparent inner, phonological system of language, stating in Chapter 2, Linguistics and Grammatology, that in fact and for reasons of essence Saussure's representative determination is "...an ideal explicitly directing a functioning which...is never completely phonetic". The idea that writing might function other than phonetically and also as more than merely a representative delineation of speech allows an absolute concept of logos to end in what Derrida describes as infinitist metaphysics. The difference in presence can never actually be reduced, as was the logocentric project; instead, the chain of signification becomes the trace of presence-absence. In literary theory Inherent in Saussure's reasoning, a structuralist approach to literature began in the 1950s to assess the literary text, or utterance, in terms of its adherence to certain organising conventions which might establish its objective meaning. Again, as for Saussure, structuralism in literary theory is condemned to fail on account of its own foundation: '...language constitutes our world, it doesn't just record it or label it. Meaning is always attributed to the object or idea by the human mind, and constructed by and expressed through language: it is not already contained within the thing'. There is no absolute truth outside of construction no matter how scientific or prolific that construction might be. Enter Derrida and post-structuralism. Other like-minded philosophers and psychoanalysts who have notably opposed logocentrism are Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Freud, as well as those who have been influenced by them in this vein. Literary critic Roland Barthes (1915–1980), with his essay The Death of the Author (1968), converted from structuralism to post-structuralism. For the post-structuralist the writer must be present in a kind of absence, or 'dead', according