The contribution of received anthropological wisdom to the study of conventionality--wisdom I propose to challenge here--can be summarized as follows. From the external perspective of analytical reflection (philosophical, scientific, linguistic, or ethnographic) social convention appears arbitrary in stipulating a non-natural, socially derived relationship between a regulative or constitutive principal and its corresponding appropriate context (different nations prescribe driving on different sides of the road) or between an expressive sign and its signified meaning (arbor and kerrekar mean "tree" in different languages). But from the internal perspective of social actors these same conventions appear necessary: if I drive on the left side of the road in this country I will either be arrested or cause an accident; if I want to talk about trees in the Belauan language of Micronesia I must use the phonetic shape kerrekar. Indeed, because it would never occur to me to consider the possibility of an alternative practice, I do not imagine myself following a rule at all as I drive or speak. As Benveniste (1971) points out in his critique of the Saussurean doctrine of the linguistic sign, there is no real contradiction here, since the external observer has the benefit of comparative knowledge of different societies, while the active participant is oriented toward achieving immediate communicational or pragmatic goals. Arbitrariness in these examples refers to the lack of natural or external motivation between rule and context or between signifier and signified and not, of course, to the random or free choice of individuals (cf. Holowka 1981). In fact, absence of motivation implies the complete responsibility of the community as the sole authority for acknowledging--or, as Kripke (1982: 89) would say, applying justification conditions to--one of several possible alternative relationships.

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