In more conventional, i.e., single-dispatch object-oriented programming languages, when invoking a method ("sending a message" in Smalltalk, "calling a member function" in C++), one of its arguments is treated specially and used to determine which of the (potentially many) classes of methods of that name is to be applied. In many languages, the "special" argument is indicated syntactically; for example, a number of programming languages put the special argument before a dot in making a method call: codice_1, so that codice_2 would produce a roar, whereas codice_3 would produce a chirp.