Sign, Design, Communication - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 29

1. What the sender has to communicate is his or her 'thoughts', 'ideas', 'represen-
tations', and 'references'. The contents of communication are ideas, thoughts,
information, signified contents, and so on. The intention of the sender precedes
and governs communication processes that transport the 'idea'—the signified
content. Thus, the same meaning in communication is based on intention.
2. When a communication is completed, the ideas based on the intention of the
sender are present to the receiver through the sign that re-presents thought, ideas,
or meaning. Thus, in an ideal exchange the very same idea that is present with
the sender will be re-presented with the receiver. Anything that prevents this
sameness between presentation and re-presentation is 'noises' improper to
communication excluded. The receiver interprets messages by the sender on
the basis that of contextuality and intentionality determines meaning.
3. The presence of meaning is fully enriched in spoken language, in which the
presence of speakers, intentions, and context lead to an understanding of mean-
ing. In other words, spoken language is the model language.
4. Supposing a homogenous space, and in a continuous manner, people invent
particular means of communication, writing, and so on. Articulated language has
come to “supplant [suppl ´ er]” the language of action and then, writing supplants
articulated language. The birth and progress of writing will follow in a line that
is direct, simple, and continuous (Derrida 1988 , p. 4). Re-presentation regularly
supplants (suppl ´e) presence. Therefore, we can translate the same meaning of
presence into written language.

The word 'supplant' implies the double notion of supplanting, replacing, and
supplementing, bringing to completion, remedying.
For the concept of the supplement harbors ... within itself two significations whose
cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary. The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a
plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates and
accumulates presence. It is thus that art, techn` , image, representation, convention, etc.,
come as supplements to nature and are rich with this entire cumulating function ... But the
supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself
in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if one fills a void. If it represents and makes an image, it
is by the anterior default of a presence. Compensatory [suppl ´ant] and vicarious, the
supplement

is an adjunct, a subaltern instance which takes-(the)-place [tient-

lieu]. (Derrida 1967b , p. 208)
As seen above, writing has been thought of as a means of communication and
extension of oral or gestural communication. To say that writing extends the field
and the power of oral or gestural communication presupposes a sort of homoge-
neous space of communication. In this homogeneous and linear process,
writing will never have the slightest effect on either the structure or the contents of
the meaning (the ideas) that it is supposed to transmit. The same content, formerly
communicated by gestures and sounds, will henceforth be transmitted by writing, by
successively different modes of notation, from pictographic writing to alphabetic writing.
(Derrida 1988 , p. 4)