In Lacan’s theory, the chain of signifiers refers to the sequence of linguistic signs (signifiers) in which meaning is never fixed, but continually reconstituted through the ongoing play of differences.
In language, there is no natural or inherent connection between a word (the signifier – the external form of the sign) and what it refers to (the signified – the content or meaning). This connection is arbitrary – or as linguistics puts it: unmotivated. That is, there is no internal reason why the word “tree” should refer to this particular object. The association is historically shaped and results from a social convention.
Crucially, a word does not derive its meaning in isolation, but through its position within a sentence – within the chain of signifiers. Just as in music, meaning emerges from what comes before and what follows. A sign means something only because it is embedded in a larger sequence of signs. This chain is potentially infinite, and its movement prevents any final, fixed meaning.
Function in Lacan’s theory: Lacan draws on Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of language and reworks it under the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss and later Jacques Derrida. For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language — and that language operates precisely through the chain of signifiers.
The subject is not the origin of its thoughts, but is constituted within language itself – through the movement of signifiers, through what is said, and through what resonates or shifts in the gaps between words.
Lacan writes:
“Un signifiant ne signifie que pour un autre signifiant.“
(“A signifier only means through another signifier.“)
This quote comes from “La signification du phallus ” (Écrits, 1966) and is a central expression of Lacan’s structuralist conception of language, developed in close dialogue with Saussure and Roman Jakobson, and extended into psychoanalytic theory. The sentence means: A single signifier has no inherent meaning — it always refers to another signifier. Meaning arises only through relation, through the chain, through the play of difference.
