Grammars of communion

In response to assertions championing the absence of meaning and significance in language originating from Jacques Derrida's linguistic concepts of deconstruction, George Steiner and John Sheriff provide analyses of language that assert the opposite. Through an emphasis on subjectivities and subjective experience in the world, both find meaning to be bonded to subjective volition and the connectivities between subjects and language systems. For Steiner, this emphasis comes in the form of asserting the presence of others and the responsibilities we have to them, while Sheriff depicts how the semiotics of Charles Peirce make meaning-making subjective and communal. I argue, therefore, that in contrast to conceptions of language that challenge the presence of meaning in language, a structure of language as conceived through Charles Peirce's semiotics and George Steiner's vision of language asserts a dependability of language and the presence of meaning based on principles of connection and communion.