However, connotative meanings may elude outsiders for a long time because they are embedded in experiences, and cannot easily be looked up in a dictionary. If they are below the waterline, local people may not be able to explain them to you. We cry when something given to us by a beloved person gets stolen or broken. A code is an organized system of signs. Codes are the rules and conventions about how you combine signs, how signs relate to each other.
Language is a code.
So is the system of highway signage, the system for classifying plants, computer algorithms, and etiquette. It is amazing how many codes there are in any culture, and that even young children come to understand their intricacies. Compare with Hall's notion of a frame, a situational dialect. A code provides the frame, the rules for how one understands and behaves in a particular environment. Action chains are also codes.