To fully understand the thesis that basic word meaning is conventional speaker meaning or expression, and to avoid misguided criticism, we need to know what conventions are. Briefly, we may say that “convention” should be understood as denoting arbitrary social practices or customs. Constituting standards of correct usage, they are one type of rule. This chapter will be devoted to clarifying what conventions in this sense do and do not entail. We will develop Lewis's idea that conventions are regularities in action that are socially useful, self-perpetuating, and arbitrary. There is no requirement, on our definitions, that the regularities be nearly universal or mutually known. And of course there is no requirement that conventions result from agreements. We will take some pains to explain how word usage can be objectively correct or incorrect if it is arbitrary and conventional. The fact that conventional regularities may have exceptions allows languages to change over time, and the self-perpetuating character of conventions coupled with linguistic variation leads to evolving families of languages. The same facts make it difficult to assign precise boundaries to languages, as we will see in Chapter 11.

DEFINITION

It is often said that conventions are agreements. Indeed, in one sense, the word “convention” denotes an international agreement, and in another denotes formal meetings designed to secure agreements. But in the sense we are concerned with, most conventions, including linguistic conventions, are not and did not result from agreements.