self-referential

English

WOTD – 2 July 2018

Etymology

From self- +‎ referential.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsɛlf ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsɛlf ˌɹɛfəˈɹɛn(t)ʃəl/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: self-re‧fer‧ent‧ial

Adjective

self-referential (comparative more self-referential, superlative most self-referential)

1. That refers to itself or oneself.
   • 1854 March 15, Leigh Hunt, “On Poems of Joyous Impulse. A Sequel to the ‘Effusion on Cream,’ Intended as much for Musical, as for Literary Consideration”, in The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, volume V, number 120, London: London Sacred Music Warehouse, J[oseph] Alfred Novello, music seller […], →OCLC, page 394, column 1:

     That is a very pleasant line, the one that we have italicized; […] Why did he [Ben Jonson] not write more such? He might answer that he did, and that his poetry was full of enjoyment. But it is not; at least not in the entirely happy, familiar, unmisgiving, self-referential, and yet not self-loving sense that we speak of.

   • 1991, Michael Lewis, Margaret Wolan Sullivan, Catherine Stanger, Maya Weiss, “Self Development and Self-conscious Emotions”, in Stella Chess, Margaret E. Hertzig, editors, Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development 1990: A Selection of the Year’s Outstanding Contributions to the Understanding and Treatment of the Normal and Disturbed Child, New York, N.Y.: Brunner/Mazel, →ISBN, page 48:

     Self-referential behavior has been defined operationally as the ability of the child to look at its image in the mirror and to show, by pointing and touching its nose, that the image in the mirror there is located in the space here at the physical site of the child itself. In the results reported in both studies, embarrassment, in general, does not occur unless self-referential behavior exists.

   • 2017 October 27, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 5 March 2018:

     What makes Scream so effective, and so timeless, is that it’s both a winking and self-referential breakdown of the tropes of the horror genre and a nearly flawless embodiment of the same.

2. (specifically) In a literary work: referring to the author or the author's other works.
   • 1846, Leigh Hunt, “Critical Notice of Dante’s Life and Genius”, in Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers. [...] In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 41:

     It [Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy] also has a design strictly self-referential. The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has obtained leave to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of things in the next world.

   • 1991, Edmund J. Smyth, editor, Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction, London: B[radley] T[homas] Batsford Ltd., →ISBN, page 34:

     Many women authors extend the sort of metafictional self-scrutiny which The Golden Notebook so extensively sustains: Eva Figes's novels, for example, often raise self-referential questioning of their own representational validity and Muriel Spark teases several of her heroines with unsettling awareness of the process of their own creation.

   • 1992, Charles Oriel, “Introduction”, in Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures), West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, →ISBN, page 2:

     The act of reading and writing and their relation to representation (in general) and literature (in particular) have, of course, received increasing attention over the last several years from authors and critics alike. We have seen a proliferation of self-referential gestures in much recent fiction: an emphasizing of the processes and implications of reading and writing, such as that found in the work of Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino, to name only two of the many authors who come to mind.

Hyponyms

• autological
• meta (informal)

Derived terms

• Tupper's self-referential formula
• self-referentiality
• self-referentially
• self-referential meaning

Related terms

• self-reference

Translations

that refers to itself or oneself

• Czech: sebevztažný, sebereferenční, autoreferenční
• French: autoréférentiel (fr), autoréférent (fr)
• Galician: autorreferencial m or f
• German: selbstbezüglich (de), selbstreferenziell (de)
• Greek: αυτοαναφορικός (el) m (aftoanaforikós)
• Hungarian: önhivatkozó, önmagára hivatkozó
• Italian: autoreferenziale
• Spanish: autorreferencial, autorreferente
• Swedish: självrefererande

in a literary work: referring to the author or the author's other works