>> Hjelmslev's Net <<
Articulation, which is constitutive of a stratum, is always a double articulation (double pincer). What is articulated is a content and an expression. Whereas form and substance are not really distinct, content and expression are. Hjelmslev's net is applicable to the strata: articulation of content and articulation of expression, with content and expression each possessing its own form and substance. Between them, between content and expression, there is neither a correspondence nor a cause-effect relation nor a signified-signifier relation: there is real distinction, reciprocal presupposition, and only isomorphy. [TP: 502-3]
Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers). Each stratum exhibits phenomena constitutive of double articulation. Articulate twice, B-A, BA. This is not to say that the strata speak or are language based. [TP: 40]
The first articulation concerns content, the second expression. The distinction between the two articulations is not between forms and substances but between content and expression, expression having just as much substance as content and content just as much form as expression. [TP: 44]
"The terms expression plane and content plane . . . are chosen in conformity with established notions and are quite arbitrary. Their functional definition provides no justification for calling one, and not the other, of these entities expression, or one, and not the other, content. They are defined only by their mutual solidarity, and neither of them can be identified otherwise. They are defined only oppositively and relatively, as mutually opposed functives of one and the same function." [TP: 45]
Content and expression are two variables of a function of stratification. [TP: 44]
There is never correspondence or conformity between content and expression, only isomorphism with reciprocal presupposition. The distinction between content and expression is always real, in various ways, but it cannot be said that the terms preexist their double articulation. It is the double articulation that distributes them according to the line it draws in each stratum; it is what constitutes their real distinction. [TP: 44]
Even though there is a real distinction between them, content and expression are relative terms ("first" and "second" articulation should also be understood in an entirely relative fashion). [TP: 44]
Both articulations establish binary relations between their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far more complex laws. The word "structure" may be used to designate the sum of these relations and relationships, but it is an illusion to believe that structure is the earth's last word. [TP: 41]
Thus there are always two articulations, two segmentarities, two kinds of multiplicity, each of which brings into play both forms and substances. But the distribution of these two articulations is not constant, even within the same stratum. [TP: 42]
The double articulation sometimes coincides with the molecular and the molar, and sometimes not; this is because content and expression are sometimes divided along those lines and sometimes along different lines. [TP: 44]
But content and expression are not distinguished from each other in the same fashion on each stratum: the distribution of content and expression is not the same on the three major strata (there is, for example, a "linearization" of expression on the organic stratum, and a "superlinearity" of the anthropomorphic strata). That is why the molar and molecular have very different combinations depending on the stratum considered. [TP: 503]
Since every articulation is double, there is not an articulation of content and an articulation of expression -- the articulation of content is double in its own right and constitutes a relative expression within content; the articulation of expression is also double and constitutes a relative content within expression. [TP: 44]
For this reason, there exist intermediate states between content and expression, expression and content: the levels, equilibriums, and exchanges through which a stratified system passes. [TP: 44]