When a train became a train....

How many times have we come across a word or any form of language and wondered where its meaning came from? Or why we call the object that word in general? Well Saussure followed through with this idea and came up with an interesting theory - that "signs function not through their intrinsic value but by the relative position."

Take Saussure's/Barry's example of a train. As many Boston residents travel around the city, we often jump on the T to get to one place to another. But while you're waiting at the platform, have you ever wondered why the train is called a "train?" According to Barry, one can't base a "train" on physical characteristics simply for the fact that they can change. Clearly you can't base the train on the time when it leaves, considering they run each at different intervals. However, let's pretend for a minute that we wanted to travel to South Station but due to rail maintenance the green line is down and we must use the red line between Park Street and South Station. With Saussure, the train is given its identity/meaning by "its position in a structure of differences" (43) - because we only know the red line train since it runs through these two stops thus making its identity purely relational to the stops we need to travel to.

For me personally, post structuralism helps me understand this statement better because the relationship between the red line and these stops is stable. Neither one is anything without the other - Park Street would lack meaning if it wasn't for the fact that I can jump on the red line. Yet, according to the post structuralism theory, to define a train simply by two stops is completely unreliable because it wants to define and reveal the center. Structuralism allows us to give a train its meaning because we are its center. We hold the meaning.