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For those interested in learning about the subject, here's a good place to start (in order):

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics http://books.google.com/books?id=B0eB8mvov6wC&printsec=f...

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf

and, for fun...

Jacques Derrida, Differànce http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/diff.html

These are all great, but I'd be wrong to not point out that Deleuze is a bit different, in that he is a materialist. The rest of 'the continentals' went Idealist and turned to Saussre etc because they rejected essences. Deleuze's place is solving that issue, creating a neo-materialism.

(At least, that is my current understanding of the history)

Of Grammatology is probably one of the most impenetrable books ever written. I'm not sure I'd recommend any of these as starting points.

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