  Nowadays, virtually all philosophers side with Hermogenes. Barring a few possible exceptions such as onomatopoeia, the association between a word and its referent is not grounded in the intrinsic nature of either the word or the referent. Rather, the association is arbitrary. In this weak sense, everyone agrees that language is conventional. However, disagreement persists about whether social convention plays a useful role in illuminating the workings of language.