ABSTRACT
Value means that language and all other social-semiological systems are organized on the basis of the relations among the terms internal to the system itself (Chapter 3, section 3). Thus, 'making love' contrasts with 'giving a lecture' in a cultural system where these two activities are distinguished in a regular and systematic way. Likewise, part of the meaning of 'snake' derives from its contrasting with 'lizard' in a system where these terms are
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systematically contrasted. There is, then, no need to postulate a separate and pre-existing world of snakes and lizards, and which these words simply name or label, or of some language-independent realm of 'concepts' or 'ideas' of snakes and lizards. That is, the meaning-making potential of language is inherent in its own intrinsic design principles, including its taxonomic principles of classification, rather than in properties of the external world. Value is a system of contextualizing relations for construing and categorizing the phenomena of experience in the world.
