The sign, the representation becomes the construct of time, space, and the social construction of reality. How meanings become real, legitimate, and enforced through socialization and manipulation becomes a political issue. Similarly, the determination of who holds the power to designate meanings becomes a power issue. A code is a system of signs. There are secret codes, codes of behavior, dress codes, pictorial codes, and codes of honor.
Codes are socially and historically defined.
As we will need to consider how signs are structured in two ways. First in the context of other signs as a syntagmatic structure, and second as parts of a paradigmatic grouping. Syntagmatic refers to the organization of signs. For spoken discourse or in writing, the organization of words is linear following the syntax of a sentence. Nonverbal communication in spoken discourse and in visual texts is organized more as a mosaic and is thus non-linear.