Words are made up of 'signifiers', or the sounds/spellings, and the 'signified', or the meaning and concepts they are talking about. However, the meaning of a word is naturally ambiguous; the word in itself and the meaning are not naturally linked. The word 'band' can refer to an elastic band, a pop music group, a gathering of brass musicians or a collection of people, each with separate connotations and mental images. This means it is the reader who will choose the meanings of words. In a similar way, reading is like trying to hold a wet fish, because there are a variety of meanings to each word. Jacques Derrida calls this "slippage along the chain of signifiers." 