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Derrida's treatment of language theory in Of Grammatology aims to expose a certain confusion between invention and discovery. Derrida does not address questions of what language is and isn't. His concern is with linguistic paradigms and with the binary opposition as carrier of metaphysical values into the discourse of other accounts of language. Deconstructive discourses are nevertheless generally credited with a theory of language of their own, for which Paul de Man's writings on rhetoric and figurality may be largely responsible. Like Of Grammatology, Allegories of Reading begins from the need to overcome an opposition between inside and outside elements of language: "the current debate opposing intrinsic and extrinsic criticism stands under the aegis of an inside/outside metaphor that is never being seriously questioned" (1979c, 5). Whether de Man's attempt to displace this metaphor brings him to the formulation of a free-standing account of what language is and isn't, is a question that serves as a point of access into the differing approaches to language in the two works.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137307033_6

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