social expressions

Clifford Geertz

"The concept of culture I espouse ... is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man (sic) is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical."

Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures; Basic Books
https://sites.google.com/site/srds101026/power-of-meaning