 The commonest argument debunking the idea of a realistic artistic style depends on the thought that artistic styles are analogous to languages (see above,  §2  for references). The comparison is intended to underline the extent to which artists rely on systems of conventions, and to discourage the idea that some styles are more truthful, or closer to reality, than others. For the things we say are not truer or closer to reality if we say them in French, or English, or Chinese. However, the analogy actually supports the claim that expressive potential is the measure of realistic art. For languages are not like codes or scripts. For example, the Hieratic and Hieroglyphic Egyptian scripts do not differ in the range of information they can be used to record, and neither do Semaphore and Morse code. But languages obviously differ widely in their expressive powers, and have expanded rapidly in some periods of history. Thus, the difference between trecento and seicento Italian art is comparable to the difference between the English of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and the English of Milton’s Paradise Lost, not to that between Morse Code and Semaphore or between English and French (see Ackerman 1978: 157–160; Hyman 2005: 47).