A single visual object shifts meaning across shifting cultural codes.

Evidence

We are all probably familiar with Barthes’s example of the sweater, which, in the rhetoric of advertising and fashion, always connotes, at least, “a warm garment” or “keeping warm,” and thus by farther elaboration, “the coming of winter” or “a cold day.” In the specialized sub-codes of fashion, sweater may connote “a fashionable style of haute couture ” or, alternatively, “an informal style of dress.” But set against the right background, and positioned in the romantic sub-code, it may connote “long autumn walk in the woods.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 801

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete worked example of how the same signifier carries layered, code-dependent meanings.
• CANDY: The sweater example is a compact illustration of how context re-writes an object’s meaning.
• XREF: connects to: The same Latin phrase flipped meaning across eras due to cultural change — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 243