As we saw, the tradition had emphasized ren humanity and was a little embarrassed at having too much focus on li ritual. Fingarette distracted too much from the merits of his discussion, I think, by trying to make too much of the metaphor of magic. The underlying point was a good one about conventions. Examples include hand-shaking, requests, debts, checks, greetings, statements. There would be no such thing unless there were a banking system embedded in a rich context of traditions.
Language is a central and obvious case of conventional shi affairs.
Language is not only an example of a convention it is also one central to all other conventions. Most of them involve the use of language. He employs the idea of a speech act. Certain speech acts are particularly interesting because the are the very acts they formulate. These speech acts are called performatives.