Telling the code: Instructions for interpretation (Continued)
Wieder's concluded, naturalistically, the code initially was portrayed as a moral structure that shaped and constrains behavior.
Ethnomethodologically, it is:
[The code] did not simply describe, analyze and explain the environment, but was as well a way in which residents (and staff, when they "told the code") guided conduct thought effective persuasion. The code operated as a device for stopping or changing the topic of conversation. It was a device for legitimately declining a suggestion or order [whatever that suggestion or order might be, whether apparently deviant or not]. It was a device for urging or defeating a proposed course of action.