Floating signifier

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In semiotics and discourse analysis, floating signifiers are signifiers, such as words or images, that can be interpreted in different ways and so do not have a clear, single referent. For example, the word "tree" is a signifier that references a tree. Although the term was developed in the mid-twentieth century, originating in Claude Lévi-Strauss's anthropological research, it is also frequently applied in contemporary scholarship. Floating signifiers are sometimes also referred to as empty signifiers, although several scholars argue that the terms mean different things. The term open signifier is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's nature to "resist the constitution of any unitary meaning", enabling its ability to remain open to different meanings in different contexts.