self-reference

American  

[self-ref-er-uhns, -ref-ruhns] / ˈsɛlfˈrɛf ər əns, -ˈrɛf rəns /

noun

1. reference made to oneself, to one's own character or experience, or to a group with which one identifies.

2. Logic. the property of a statement that is a statement about itself, as “This statement is grammatical.”

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Sensitive Note

Social, ethnic, or other groups often use terms of self-reference in a neutral, even affectionate or jocular way, much like nicknames. These self-referential terms function to reinforce solidarity among members of the group. However, when used by outsiders, these very same terms are perceived as offensive by those who belong to the group. Examples of self-referential terms are Canuck, chick, dyke, geek, nigger, queer.

Other Word Forms

• self-referential
  adjective
• self-referring
  adjective
• self-referentially
  adverb

Example Sentences

And each iteration of “Irma Vep” brings additional, increasingly complex ripples of self-reference.

From New York Times • Jun. 6, 2022

The shade, when it’s thrown, is aimed mostly at the Intellectual Property Industrial Complex, with its voracious appetite for repetition and shameless self-reference.

From Washington Post • Dec. 21, 2021

A truly fascinating man, Angleton was a devoted student of the matchless British literary critic William Empson, who descried, in the densely metaphoric poems of Donne and Shakespeare, patterns of subtle contradiction, self-reference, and ambiguity.

From The New Yorker • Aug. 26, 2019

In literature, I loved artifice and self-reference above all: metafiction from all eras, extreme experimentalism at the level of word and sentence.

From Slate • Sep. 18, 2018

She was too rancourless, too detached from conventional standards, too free from private self-reference.

From The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) by James, Henry