Connotative codes map a culture’s power structure into everyday signs.

Evidence

Connotational codes of this order are, clearly, structured enough to signify, but they are more “open” or “open-ended” than denotative codes. What is more, they clearly contract relations with the universe of ideologies in a culture, and with history and ethnography. These connotative codes are the “linguistic” means by which the domains of social life—the segmentations of culture, power, and ideology—are made to signify. They refer to the “maps of meaning” into which any culture is organized, and those “maps of social reality” have the whole range of social meanings, practices and usages, power and interest, “written in” to them. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 801

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the ‘maps of meaning’ concept that converts semiotics into a theory of ideology.