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| Albanian highlanders in Vermosh |
Experts, especially those engaged in comparative analysis between cultural systems, have observed that in many cultures, coughing carries specific symbolic meanings.
Umberto Eco said that members of different cultures differentiate various types of abusive coughs, and stimulated coughing is an institutionalized behavior model.
In this way, premodern Albanian society, especially in rural regions, when men roamed at night, occasionally coughed before crossing paths with other men walking in the opposite direction or before approaching a man or a group of men moving more slowly in their direction, as they passed by houses or other livestock pens.
Such coughing conveyed the message that men who coughed were not roaming at night for ill purposes and often identified travelers in the dark of the night.
Many highlanders, especially those with more prominence in the region, had something distinctive, self-identifying in their stimulated coughing.
Even in modern days, coughing symbolically conveys specific messages, albeit much less in the darkness of the night.
In general, men cough when they enter a service or sales unit if the person they are supposed to serve is not present at the counter but is in some corner where they shouldn't be. Such a cough simultaneously acknowledges the presence of a customer in the service or sales unit's premises and summons the clerk or salesperson to assume their role.