It is always possible to isolate a cultural framework in which some contextual and circumstantial selections are coded, as in the example of alligator shoes in a Western culture.
Obviously in a savage culture where shoes are scarcely known) and where the idea that the skin of an alligator serves to make shoes is absolutely unknown), the sentence quoted above could also be interpreted as referring to shoes for alligators, thereby appearing somewhat whimsical but at least less unacceptable than the idea of killing alligators in order to make Cinderella a present.
Umberto Eco
[From: A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1976]
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Grant Hart's red alligator shoes
Photograph: Paul Hilcoff
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