Telling the code: Instructions for interpretation (Continued)
Inasmuch as these data are inmate-produced accounts, like most of the data of sociology, they are visible phenomena in the way they occur as interactional events between an investigator and his subjects...the convict code could be examined as something like a language event that inmates or residents, staff, and researchers employ to "interpret" conduct...the code, in fact, was encountered by me...in the very setting that it was being used to "tell about." That is, the activity of "telling the code" was informing the investigator about actions in the same setting in which the act of "Telling the code" was itself a part and was included in the action being described."...the activity of "telling the code" in a behavioral environment accomplished (or created or sustained) a particular kind of social reality for those who witnessed the "scene."