Formal codes spawn informal parallel codes that serve the same function oppositely.

Evidence

Such extra codes are formed if, with increasing complexity in society, communication media have to satisfy increasing demand for the transmission of selections. Then, alongside the actual communication codes, which have to be abstracted and specified, extra codes arise running counter to them which, while having opposite properties, are able to fulfil virtually the same function. In the scientific system, for example, processes of communication and information-processing rest not only on officially recognized criteria of truth but, in addition, very considerably on reputation. Intimate relationships are not orientated only to the code of love but also form a concrete history of interwoven personal histories, which can to a greater or lesser extent be substituted for the code. Money is in itself so complex that sub-currencies are normally not needed, but they do appear in times of crisis, especially in times of inflation – for instance in the form of moving into foreign currencies, gold, cigarettes, property and land, which, for better or worse, take over part of the function of the money-code. The relationship between formal and informal power is only another instance of this general situation. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 659

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘extra code’ concept with concrete examples: reputation alongside truth, personal histories alongside love, informal alongside formal power.
• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s Luhmann-to-Ishiguro argument: Stevens’s deference operates under the extra (informal) code of the master-servant personal bond within the formal code of institutional duty.