利科批评结构主义把语言看作封闭的符号系统，他则从语义学的角度认为语言内在地拥有一种动态的意指结构。这种意指结构在语言层面意味着话语作为事件被实现并作为意义被理解。但意义不是纯主观的，它在意向外化的过程中被固定为语言文字，使人的经验在某种程度上成为客观可理解的。这种外化在文学作品中达到了极致，随着对真实语境的取消，文本得以指称关于生存的世界命题并扩大我们的存在视域。这样，意义最终被导向对主体自身的客观理解。

Paul Ricoeur rejects the Structuralist view of language as a closed system of symbols, and maintains, from the perspective of semantics, that language inherently possesses a dynamic structure of signification. This signification structure implies the discourse, in linguistic domain, is realized as an event and understood as meaning. But meaning is not wholly subjective, as it is substantialized in linguistic forms during the process of externalization, which to a certain degree enables the comprehensibility of human experience. The act of externalization culminates in literary works. With the cancellation of the realistic context, literary texts are allowed the capacity to refer to existence as a proposition and expand the horizon of being. Therefore, meaning is inevitably directed to the objective understanding of the subject itself.