He then published Speech and Phenomena , Of Grammatology , and Writing and Difference . They set out his strategy of 'deconstruction' - a method of reading texts based on a very particular theory of language. Like structuralists, Derrida's theory of language proposes that there is no inherent relationship between the linguistic signifier and the signified, and that the meaning of a word issues from the structure of language itself. Because the establishment of meaning is deferred by the process of differing, every element has both past and furture elements within it - 'trace'. Trace' ensures that meaning can never be fully present.
Meaning is constantly deferred and always marked by absence, and meaning is therefore never fixed.
Based on this view of language, Derrida argues that traditional interpretation of texts rely on the false assumptions that meaning is 'present' and can be fixed, that the process of 'reading' locates meaning, and that the author is the source of a text's meaning. Derrida offers 'Deconstruction' as an alternative strategy for interpreting texts, which releases the 'play of signification' and the elusiveness of meaning within a text. Derrida deconstructs Western logocentrism, or the tradition which subordinates writing, by showing that the speaker does not always intend what is said. The deconstructive method draws out the binary oppositions which inhere within a text and close off the freeplay of meaning. By revealing the metaphors used to maintain the dominance of one concept within a binary opposition, and then inverting it, Derrida has deconstructed modern philosophy.