ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the reflexivity of language is investigated from the perspective of the communicating participants and from that of the linguist. It identifies some of the reflexive methods and techniques employed by the participants in interpersonal communication and to investigate the extent to which these methods are accessible for linguistic analysis and, hence, can be exploited on integrational premises. Linguistic inquiry is constituted by being language about language, and thus ultimately it depends on the reflexivity of language, but in itself this dependence does not cancel or suspend the principle of cotemporality in order to make linguistic inquiry possible. Any purposeful attempt at renewing linguistic experience interpersonally requires that private signs can be made “public” in the sense that they can be functionally reassigned on the macrosocial level. Integrational linguistics does acknowledge this difference, and this is also why methodology and “the methodological mindset” is considered problematic.
