Distinction is the process of accounting for differences; the result of such a process.
It is useful to differentiate, even to separate things, the process of differentiation is different from that of dividing two or more things.
It is one thing to distinguish two things, quite another to separate them by suggesting that they are separable (i.e., that they can exist separately from each other).
While Ferdinand de Saussure argues that language and speech are separable, Roland Barthes believes that they are barely distinguishable: “Language flows into discourse, discourse flows back into language, they surpass each other like children with fist-raised baseball bats” (Barthes, Reader, 471)
