“To Signify, is other words, is to engage in certain rhetorical games” (48). Gates emphasizes the play of Signifyin(g); while many scholars highlight the aggressive and insulting parts of Signifyin(g), it is more about play and can be used for insulting or building up. “Whereas signification depends for order and coherence on the exclusion of unconscious associations which any given words yields at any given time, Signification luxuriates in the inclusion of the free play of these associative rhetorical semantic relations” (49). Signification involves repeating, reserving, and revising discourse. In this, “meaning [content] is devalued while the signifier is valorized” (61). Signifyin(g) in the trope of trope in that it subsumes many other tropes; because of this, “one does not Signify some thing; one Signifies in some way” (78). Signifyin(g) is a conscious and persuasive rhetorical strategy instead of just being a verbal game.
Signification comes partly from the Signifying Monkey stories, in which the trickster monkey convinces the Lion that the Elephant said insulting things about him. The Monkey is speaking figuratively, but the Lion takes him literally. In this, the Monkey wins and, in getting to the Lion and setting up a situation in which the Elephant beats the Lion, the Monkey shows that he is the King. Because of these stories, the implied third element (the Elephant) in important in Signifyin(g). Gates argues that “the Signifying Monkey is the figure of a black rhetoric in the Afro-American speech [as opposed to writing] community” (53).