While riding down an elevator, we can tell a person's occupation, class, and even destination by the way she or he is dressed, We know that he or she is a middle-class business person, a worker, a college student, or someone going to an interview or on a date or to the beach. Convention is the word used for commonly agreed upon form of behavior, dress, art, literature, film, etc. They form the basis of communication.
Communication depends on shared conventions .
Narrative has its own conventions. Conventions of the dominant culture tend to dominate conventions of subordinate cultures. So subordinate cultures develop tactics to subvert them in order to speak in their own voices and of their own experiences that are otherwise ignored, marginalized, distorted, or suppressed. Here's an example of Ralph Ellison subverting, satirizing, or, to use an African American tactic, signifying on the bildungsroman . Invisible Man Subordinate cultures also develop conventions of their own.