Conventionalization

Every aspect of Renaissance realism seemed calculated to outmode the medieval illuminators' pictorial vocabulary with its miniature dimensions - two-dimensional patterning and conventionalizations of natural forms.

Once this crucial distinction is recognized, the examples cited in Ms. Countryman's review lose their malignant aura and are seen to instantiate a phenomenon common to all languages and dialects: ambiguity or underdetermination of meaning in the absence of adequate context or conventionalization.