The doctor, nurse or patient will relate to the number as a visual trope, in this case a metaphor, for the health of the body.
Such information adds to other data forming a symptomology for the patient, a summation that takes place at a connotative cognitive level.
Hence, the meanings as to health or illness are selected from the connotational framework which the interpreter has constructed through training and experience given that each possible state of well-being is represented by a cluster of symbolic attributes, one of which is the patient's temperature.
Limiting an analysis purely to the sign system comprised by paradigms and syntagms excludes key elements in the interpretive process.
The editorial decision may be supporting social values, attitudes and beliefs that are embedded into the culture—for example, that nations ought to conscript only men to serve on the front-lines of a war.