The Languages of Convention
Literature and Consensus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3132888 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charles Eric Reeve, Charles Eric Reeves (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3 |
| Publication date | 1986-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1772086 |
| OpenAlex | W2320466064 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
The term has been appropriated in so many ways, slips so readily from one way of speaking to another, that an inquiry into the nature of a particular form of conventional behavior risks finding itself crushingly burdened by the tasks of disentangling the various claims made upon the word and distinguishing the many ends it is supposed to serve. Surveying the critical literature, one may be tempted to say that in art, like Wilde's truth, implies a contradiction, perhaps many. I shall argue in fact, precisely this. But contradiction need not entail chaos, logical or otherwise. For a theory of convention - and I propose to develop in this essay is the language appropriate for a theory of convention - should seek within the array of competing views a conceptual counterpoint, a pattern of uses that yields an explanatory logic. Such an effort moves forward not by narrow prescription, a preemptive declaration of the form convention is ... x,but synthetically- by exploring how multifarious critical and theoretical contradiction might in fact be constituted by the internal tensions of the term itself. Thus by a theory of convention I mean a heuristic organization of certain rival claims and locutions that prove persistently useful in talking about are perceived by readers, interpreters, and theorists of texts as characteristic regularities' in - or in response to - texts designated literary. (The designation literary is itself heuristic, a means of grouping such textual or readerly in a way that reveals the nature of the peculiar communal consensus they represent.) Obviously my account cannot be 1. Characteristic regularities is as neutral a synonymous term for as I can devise. All definitions of convention, and otherwise, seem to imply some sort of regularity; the question what is characteristic about these 'regularities'? is precisely the one I am seeking not to prejudge
Convention · Linguistics · Political science · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |