The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures
the essence of the passage.
Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and be
learned at so early an age, that they appear not to be constructed - the effect of an articulation between
sign and referent - but to be ‘naturally’ given. Simple visual signs appear to have achieved a ‘nearuniversality’ in this sense: though evidence remains that even apparently ‘natural’ visual codes are culture
specific. However, this does not mean that no codes have intervened; rather, that the codes have been
profoundly naturalized. The operation of naturalized codes reveals not the transparency and ‘naturalness’ of
language but the depth, the habituation and the near-universality of the codes in use. They produce
apparently ‘natural’ recognitions. This has the (ideological) effect of concealing the practices of coding
which are present.