ABSTRACT
Conventional symbolization defines and precipitates a sharp distinction between its own symbols and orders on one hand and the world of their reference and ordering on the other. Although conventional symbolization is necessary to and definitive of every human culture, comparatively few traditions identify it as the legitimate realm of human action. Conventional symbolization aims at the precise, orderly classification and replication of the natural world; it negotiates an orderly universe through the fabrication of a heuristic theoretical order. For any nonarbitrary symbolization, any "motivation", that is not of a conventional character threatens to subvert and supplant the conventional symbolization with a "nonarbitrariness" of a much more piquant and individual variety. There is in fact an ever-present tension between the conventionalizing potentialities and the tropic potentialities of all symbolic elements in use a tension that threatens to erode and counteract the intentionality of the user.
