Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Language & Communication

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom

Experienced repetition. Integrational linguistics and the first-

person perspective
Bettina Perregaard
Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This article is concerned with the relationship between the first-person perspective and
Available online 24 August 2022 the experience of linguistic repetition in processes of contextualization and integration.
The sense of a sign’s repeatability has to do with our own historicity. An act of repetition
Keywords: involves a subjectively experienced lived-through sense of sameness that cannot be
First-person perspective encapsulated by the idea of form-meaning pairings or type and token. From a phenome-
Experience
nological perspective I argue that a sign gets its perceived identity from its experienced
Contextualization
appearances. That in the sign which becomes repeatable is exactly that which is the
Sign-making
Repetition
identity in all of its appearances. The fact that this identity can come forward is the sine qua
Integration non condition for the sign’s continuous revitalization. The relevance of the existential
implications of the phenomenon of repetition for integrational linguistics is also
considered.
Ó 2022 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC
BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction

Integrational linguistics aims “to provide an account of linguistic experience” (Harris 1981: 164). Its primary object of
investigation is therefore “the individual linguistic act in its communicational setting” (Harris 1981: 166). That, however, is
not its sole concern. Integrational linguistics is a philosophy of linguistics, but “its job is not one of giving philosophical
justification to . particular metalinguistic representations that linguistics has produced: i.e. particular ‘descriptions’ and
‘explanations’ of linguistic phenomena. Rather, it is to engage with the activities of description and explanation and with the
representational methods by which we make sense of their results” (Taylor 1997a: 5).
One such activity of description and explanation concerns the phenomenon of repetition. The orthodox concept of lin-
guistic repetition is based on the idea that form-meaning pairings of one communicational situation can be reinstantiated in
another. From the perspective of integrational linguistics, however, the individual linguistic act is tied to its communicational
setting just as the ensuing linguistic experience is tied to the first-person perspective. Acts and experiences are nonrepeatable
and nonseparable from the way that individuals contextualize them in immediate situations. Integrational linguistics thus
questions the assumption that something can be expressed in a form that is repeatable, because the form itself depends on
such processes of contextualization.
Nevertheless, we – as human subjects – consider acts and experiences of repetition to be a prevalent part of our everyday
lives: we seem to do and say the same things over and over again. This paradox is explored in Talbot Taylor’s work on
reflexivity (Taylor 2010, 2012), in Nigel Love’s discussion of type and token (Love 1990), and in Michael Toolan’s analysis of the

E-mail address: perreg@hum.ku.dk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2022.05.005
0271-5309/Ó 2022 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
0/).
112 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118

implications of particular theoretical approaches to repetition (Toolan 1996). Integrational linguistics has been successful in
demonstrating how and why the orthodox approach to repetition is untenable, but it has been less articulate when it comes to
characterizing the implications of the first-person perspective (but see Duncker 2019; Pablé and Hutton 2015; Perregaard
2017, 2018): How can we approach the process of contextualization that allows something to appear to someone as an
event of repetition? In this article I return to the question of repetition, but I do so in an attempt to provide an account of
linguistic experience which critically engages with features of the first-person perspective. Furthermore, the broad and
general experience of repetition (whether linguistic or not) has to do with existential issues. I demonstrate that a close ex-
amination of the first-person perspective also clarifies aspects of the existential implications of the phenomenon of repetition
that are relevant to integrational linguistics but have so far been overlooked.

2. Experienced manifestations of repetition

Acts of repetition are foundational to language, science and the arts. We rely on the idea of repetition whenever we
interact, question each other, relate to past events, challenge conventional signs or create new material forms. The concept of
repetition provides us with means of describing and explaining issues of fundamental importance to the way that we – as
embodied beings – are embedded in our natural environment.
The most basic coordination of the way we breathe and move invites repetition. Acts of repetition were essential to the
development and organization of practices necessary for the survival of our species. Methods of hunting, fishing, and farming
depend on the observation of alternating periods of light and darkness, seasonal availability of resources, periodic variations
in sea level, reproductive life cycles, and so on. Highly complex perceptual-cognitive skills are required to identify such
patterns of repetition (Mandler 2004; Tomasello 2003). Practices of repetition are helpful in improving skills, adapting tools,
co-ordinating linguistic activities, and safeguarding people in their natural surroundings and social institutions. We spon-
taneously, as well as deliberately, constitute something as an act or event of repetition in order to cognitively organize, bodily
manage, and performatively display its meaning and implications. Repetition has to do with recognition, recollection,
improvement, mastery, and, ultimately, freedom of expression in the affairs of our everyday lives, in scientific investigation,
and in the creation of art.
It seems reasonable to suggest that the ecological environment that the biological organism moves and develops within
has some impact on the way that humans interact, the way that language is accomplished and originally came into being
(Taylor 1997b; 1997c). As Merlin Donald (2001) has argued, there is a performative, mimetically organized aspect of pre-
linguistic behavior that is still present in our everyday linguistic behavior. We know that infants imitate facial expressions
when they are newborn (Meltzoff 1995; Meltzoff and Moore 1998). This behavior does not seem to involve any empty or
instinctive repetitive movements but should rather be interpreted as an interactional response (Reddy 2008). It is commu-
nicational, musical, and rhythmical (Malloch and Trevarthen 2009). These early interactions enculturate children and prepare
them emotionally, socially and cognitively for that phenomenal accomplishment of interactionally and individually devel-
oping language. Repetition is a kind of response. It is a response to something that has happened before, a response to
interactional partners, and a response to the real or imagined demands of the immediate circumstances. Repetition reenacts
in creating something new. The intersection of the old and the new, what is remembered and anticipated, makes it possible to
orient in different ways towards the future. In evolutionary musicology and in developmental psychology repetition is un-
derstood in terms of mimesis, imitation, improvisation, and communicative musicality. Bodily movements and rhythmic
sound making of mother and child in early interaction are expressively and communicatively coordinated (Gratier and Apter-
Danon 2009). These movements reflect emotionally motivated behavior and involve actions of repetition in their most
fundamental form. The origin of language in human evolution and child development is intricately connected with inter-
actional patterns of repetition, rhythm, and reciprocity.
Repetition seems to serve several different purposes: In the form of imitation or mirroring it establishes and furthers
emotional connectedness and interactional companionship. In performing the same bodily movements individuals can try
out and improve their skills. In integrating the same activities again and again people contribute to establishing and extending
awareness of a social practice. Repetition seems to soothe the soul whether in meditation, in prayer or in managing stress.
Repetition can be joyful in watching the same movies, in baking the same cakes, in doing things in the same order, in
travelling to the same destinations or it can be tedious, block new ideas and initiatives. Repetition may inspire creativity or
stifle innovation, but it is first and foremost a prerequisite for the mastering and retention of new skills and knowledge. In
language, repetition leads to culturally entrenched patterns of doing and speaking (Bybee 2006).
When it comes to the sign, advanced reasoning skills and decision-making abilities are required to make a distinct sign and
thus arrive at a distinct form. The historicity of the sign as experienced does not come from the sign itself, but from the type of
intentionality that repeatedly constitutes the sign as the same sign. The sign comes to appear to us as the same sign when we
intentionally engage with it in acts of recognition, recollection, and recontextualization or – in other words – through the
intentional act of recognizing, recollecting, and recontextualizing. The sign is contextualized as having a relevance that im-
poses itself on the presence. The sense of a sign’s repeatability has to do with our own historicity.
Perhaps the interactional organizations and narrative patterns that are creatively made and recognized across different
individuals, situations, linguistic, cultural and geographical settings are an embodied proclivity, a way of perceiving, speaking,
and acting in the world (Bruner 1990; Perregaard 2022). These patterns certainly look alike and human beings make, enact,
and navigate by them. Linguists refer to interactional and narrative behavior with analytical terms like turn-constructional
 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118 113

units (Sacks et al. 1974) elements of narrative structure (Labov and Waletzky 1967), equivalence and parallelism (Jakobson
1960; Hymes 1996; Perregaard 2022). Analytical terms are second-order metalinguistic conceptualizations of the way that
social and narrative behavior and linguistic experience seem to interactionally unfold. Taylor suggests that “the possession of
what we, in the human linguistic culture, call ‘language’ is the way that those cognitive and communicational abilities
manifest themselves in a form that is recognizable to those of us who are members of that culture. In other words, recog-
nizably linguistic behaviour seems to be, not the source of our cognitive and communicational abilities, but an evaluative
criterion by which we, in our linguistic culture, typically evaluate possession of those abilities (c.f. Harris 1984). Taking
language as the source of those abilities would thus appear to be an illusion created by the linguistic nature of our evaluative
methods” (Taylor 1997b: 76).

3. Integrational perspectives on repetition

The question of human expressivity, its character, material forms of manifestation, its connection to creativity, action, and
interaction brings perspectives from developmental psychology, integrational linguistics, and phenomenology together. We
apparently speak the same language and recreate the same signs in communicating with each other, but the boundedness of
the body to its changing temporal and spatial circumstances prevents true repetition from taking place. We nonetheless
constitute what we do and experience as something that looks like or is the same, is comparable to or identical with what we
have seen or done before.
Roy Harris (1981, 1986, 1998) emphasizes the coherence between linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena. Integrational
linguistics rests on a principle of non-segregation and focuses on co-temporality: the fact that we continuously integrate and
contextualize what we hear, say, read and write with whatever else is going on around us. This kind of integration is
embodied, situational, and time-bound. It therefore cannot be repeated. As a consequence, we cannot objectively determine
what something means in taking form or what it may come to mean if we reconstitute and recontextualize it in order to make
it work again. Semantic meaning is also subject to the principle of co-temporality and therefore points to the principle of
semantic indeterminacy of spoken as well as written language. Nevertheless, processes of conventionalisation take place all
the time: “Conventionalisation is driven by similarity and repetition. A particular convention is not a type, and conventional
acts are not tokens that manifest any abstract type. Types are atemporal, but conventions accumulate over time, across
situations, as a consequence of interactants’ repetition of prior acts (whether their own or others’) that occurred under cir-
cumstances they perceive to be similar to the present. It is only by being repeated by someone that one-offs become the
candidate material for conventionalisation. Similarity, however, is a personal matter. What one person finds to be similar, may
seem dissimilar or unrelated to another person, either due to a difference in processes of socialisation or to different con-
ceptions of the present and/or prior events. This means that conventions are personal, but they differ from habits and
mannerisms that are personal in the sense that they do not involve or require the participation of others. While conventions
are always conventions for someone, the relevance of conventions for the individual person can only be recognized in the
realm of sociality” (Duncker and Perregaard 2017: 29).
The performative aspect of repetition is particularly significant within the arts. The musical works, plays, and ballets that
are performed again and again may be considered ideal objects and particular performances their time-bound instantiations
(Benson 2003). However, a first-person perspective reveals that any attempt to represent or repeat presupposes a subjectively
experienced lived-through sense of sameness that cannot be encapsulated by the idea of type and token. Furthermore, a
phenomenological analysis demonstrates how repetitive actions are constituted and performed by a subject who changes
continuously and therefore views the phenomenon to be repeated in new and different ways. Repetition is an impossibility
that we nonetheless constantly practice in performing actions.
The theatrical production is a good example of this. Space, time, and bodily perspectives are organized in a complex and
multifaceted interaction between the players on stage, the players and their audience, and the individual players and the
characters they develop. Players have to relate to the play they perform in an ongoing process (in real and dramatic time). The
play (usually) stays the same while players themselves change. This fact influences the way the performative aspects of the
play are experienced and organized. Kenneth Branagh explains what it was like to play Henry V no less than 139 times: “[M]y
own performance changed a great deal. I became, naturally enough I suppose, much stiller physically and therefore probably
more kingly. I grew in confidence technically and felt much more able to ‘play the house’. Indeed after about 60 performances
so dramatic did I consider the improvement of my own work over the period that I shuddered to think what I had been like
early on! . As time went on I also felt the piece more painful to play, the feeling of desolation in the play more palpable”
(Branagh 1988: 104). The role as Henry V remains the same, but space, time, bodily experience, and artistic discipline work
back reflexively on both character and voice. And Branagh, of course, brings his own imagination and his dynamic self-
relations into the part he plays.
When a linguistic sign is constituted as the same sign in an act of repetition it becomes recontextualized. It is intended and
upheld as the same sign. Its form is indeterminate in the sense that whatever its recognizable features, it seems to depend on
a number of forgotten aspects that were different then from the way the sign is now being made to function. Its meaning is
indeterminate and open-ended as well. The sign, as a repetition of a sign constituted at a previous event, is a second-order
construct responded to in a first-order communicational process. Whereas the three fundamental principles of interaction
and communication within integrational linguistics are considered highly controversial within mainstream linguistics, their
counterpart within aesthetic theory is broadly recognized: the seamlessness or negotiable flexibility of material forms that
114 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118

are never wholly isolable, the subordination of any performance to the principle of co-temporality, and the semantic inde-
terminacy and inexhaustibility of any work of art. A work of art is characterized by being non-conventional, emotionally
charged, indeterminate, and inexhaustible (Sepp and Embree, 2010).

4. The first-person perspective

A phenomenological approach is compatible with integrational linguistics for at least three reasons: 1) Phenomenology is
concerned with the way phenomena appear to anyone who is intentionally engaged with and acts upon the world as it
unfolds. The subject to whom the phenomenon appears has self-awareness. To have self-awareness is to experience what is
experienced as given to one’s first-person perspective (Zahavi 2005). 2) Phenomenology, consequently, investigates the first-
person perspective and the temporal structure that organizes experience. Philosophically, it provides a detailed analysis of the
different conditions for and aspects of the structure of consciousness and a window into the workings of embodied expe-
rience. It explains our sense of having a unified experience of (linguistic) continuity. It also explains the dimension of identity
or sameness that structures our understanding of repeatability. Conscious experience is temporally structured. We may be
intentionally oriented toward a particular object in the immediate present. It is kept in mind (retention) when we turn toward
something else, and we anticipate it (protention) when we try to get a glimpse of it again. Temporality is a condition for the
way we act and perceive. That also means that the words that are perceived by us as immediately present in ongoing
communication soon become characterized by their absence when we move on to discuss something else. These words, then,
must be intended in their absence or recontextualized in a new communicative initiative to be intended again in their
presence. They sustain their identity in new appearances to the extent that they are intended and treated as the same words.
3) Phenomenologists insist that there is a structural relation between the intentional act and the intended object which
cannot be broken. The way that we approach an object is correlated with that object. The intending subject and the intended
object, therefore, should not – indeed cannot – be studied independently. The insight of integrational linguistics is similar. To
Harris “communication is intrinsically time-bound”. That means that “all assignments of meaning are made by time-bound
agents. We have no alternative but to interpret particular episodes of communication by integrating them into the unique
temporal sequence of events which constitutes our previous experience” (Harris 1998: 84). This causes methodological
challenges to the investigation of language (Duncker 2011, 2019) and to the conceptualization of repetition as phenomenon,
action, and form. We cannot step out of language in order to consider it. Similarly, we cannot step out of intentionality to
review it from the outside. Robert Sokolowski suggests that “[i]f we are to make intentionality an issue” we need to realize
that in doing so “we turn to the very having of issues” (Sokolowski 1984: 114).
A first-person perspective cannot be shared or duplicated. It cannot be escaped either. We are born with it and it dies with
us. The first-person perspective involves the possession of intentionality. We are always directed toward something: real or
imagined phenomena, objects, persons or language. We reach beyond ourselves and intend and relate to what we perceive by
virtue of a particular act: we may doubt, question, embrace, or reconsider what we perceive. To intend an object is to perform
an act. In performing the act, the object of the act is experienced. The object may be deliberately intended again and again, but
the experience of the object as intended changes. Each appearance involves a unique and momentary presentation and the
experiencing person changes as well. Objects as well as persons are temporally and spatially embedded and bounded which is
why repetition cannot be reduced to a question of making copies, replicas or other kinds of representations. Instead it de-
pends on the intentional act of the person who performs an act or perceives particular phenomena or actions of others as
instances of repetition.
Repetition requires recollection as well as imagination. To recollect or imagine are particular forms of intentionality.
Objects, signs, or persons are perceived, pictorially or signitively intended, recollected or imagined. When we remember
something, we do not remember it in any neutral or objective manner. We remember the atmosphere, the tension, the harsh
or loving words of a friend. And we remember all of these things from the perspective of the way we feel about them now and
through the understanding of the event in the light of earlier or later happenings. The mood of today affects the way we
intend yesterday’s events and recollect and ‘repeat’ them in a new conversation, in a written diary or in the way that we
return to them in our minds again and again (Heidegger 1927/2010; Ruin 2018). Signs are an integrated part of the
remembering and imagining. They cannot be isolated from the feel of the whole situation.
Identity presents itself and is sustained in an object throughout its many appearances, but it cannot be reduced to any of its
appearances: “The identity transcends its manifold of presentations, it goes beyond them. The identity is not merely the sum
of its appearances; to see it as just their sum would flatten out the two dimensions that must be distinguished here. It would
make everything just a series of appearances, all in one dimension, instead of recognizing the identity as beyond the
dimension of appearances, as something presented through them all, and through other appearances as well” (Sokolowski
2000: 30). That means that identity is given to us in the object that we experience again: it is the same object. But what
about the sign? What are the implications for the experience of the sign? The identity of the sign also “transcends its manifold
of presentations”. These presentations can only be experienced by the time-bound communicating agents who make,
contextualize and integrate them in immediate situations. The sign gets its perceived identity from its experienced ap-
pearances. That in the sign which becomes repeatable is exactly that which is the identity in all of its different appearances.
The fact that this identity can come forward in the sign’s appearances is – I suggest – the sine qua non condition for its
continuous revitalization or reinvigoration. From a third-person perspective the sign is indeterminate. But from the first-
person perspective a sign is recognizable and repeatable by virtue of the identity that shines through or comes forward in
 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118 115

its different appearances. It is the unity of experience made possible by the inner time-consciousness of the first-person
perspective that secures the continuity and sense of identity in experienced phenomena. An act of repetition constitutes
the sign as the same sign as before. Linguistic experience has to do with the connection between the way the sign was made –
and thus appeared before – and the way it appears now as expressed, remembered, imagined or identified in a dictionary. The
sign is (re)made by the individual by virtue of the perceived identity in its previous appearances. To the individual, the sign
“identifies itself in such presentations” (Sokolowski 1984: 123).
Insisting that the sign is entirely new in every new situation seems to short-circuit the continuity of (linguistic) experience.
Instead we need to take the lived experience of language seriously. To do so is to acknowledge that the sign in its embodied
configuration and material manifestation has expressive qualities and obtains its recognizability and continuity in terms of
the perceived identity in appearances that cuts across the different situations of speaking and writing that the individual
participates in. Furthermore, it is not so that the sign changes, because it is not an organism or a physical object that time can
wear down. The sign consists in its being made and in its appearances: “Its substance is also its form” (Sokolowski 1984: 123).
Its repeatability depends on the perceived identity in its appearances. Individuals recognize and deal with this identity
whenever they recontextualize what appeared to them before in new communicational situations. They treat these ap-
pearances as instances of repetition.
The fact that we can intend something in its absence as well as in its presence is particularly relevant to the experience of
repetition. In repeating we need to more or less simultaneously intend something in its absence and in its presence. We need
to intend what is no longer there and also intend what is about to be in order to creatively repeat. We recognize that what was
once there as an activity, comment, narrative, or event can be reenacted, quoted, come around again, and that we can make
that happen by integrating what was once there into what is going on now. In doing that we may be precise, sloppy,
manipulative, self-deceiving. Nonetheless, the coordination and integration of what was once there into what is about to be is
to repeat. The experienced identity is the result of the contextualizing effort. Of course, the contextualization may be
questioned, objected to or negotiated by communicational partners, but that is a different matter.
What is achieved in acts of repetition is the experience of identity, similarity, or sameness. If the repetition involves
reference to the same object: “Look, it is that funny umbrella that we saw yesterday”, we distinguish between the object (the
umbrella) and the sign that refers to the object. While the object stays the same (though one day older and perhaps torn by
weather or perhaps not even the exact same umbrella but one of the same kind), the sign that refers to the object is not the
same. The situational circumstances and the spatio-temporal embeddedness of the participants have changed. The making of
the sign “umbrella” is not the same on these two occasions, but the new situation involves the togetherness of the two girls
whose experience of the umbrella in its second appearance is constituted by at least one of them as a repetition. The umbrella
presents itself to them again, one of the girls refers to the object by the word “umbrella” and insists that the reappearing of the
object involves identity as well as continuity within her life world. The existential challenge and the linguistic experience
accounted for in this simple example consist in the perceived repetition of something which has been lost. It reaffirms
friendship, emotional and interactional bonds, directs desire: “For my birthday I would love to have an umbrella like that”,
upholds narrative continuity and biographical history: “Do you remember when we were fifteen and we went to Seattle and
we twice saw that funny umbrella down at the Pike Place Fish Market?”. Sokolowski reminds us that “[w]hen we recognize
something, we have not only an object given, but the sameness or the identity of the object given as well: not just the
sameness of the object with itself, but the sameness of the object as that which could remain itself even if it were absent from
us, or as that which once was absent but is now present” (Sokolowski 1984: 115).
What is important to realize is that the sameness is not only in our own constitution of it, but that the sameness is, in fact,
‘in’ the material sign as well. The sign becomes expressive of the sameness that we recognize in it (Rosenthal 2004). The
phenomenological approach to form in the analysis of sameness has to do with the presentational form: the umbrella can be
pointed at or remembered or dreamt about or wished for. It can be presented in a photograph or a drawing or be permeated
by the mood of excitement and expectation that characterized that trip to Seattle or by the sentimental or melancholic mood
when, many years later, I think of myself and my friend as we were when we were still young and on our own in Seattle. The
form itself involves intentionality. The potentialities of contextualization and integration have to do with the intentional form
that makes room for and make possible the expressive qualities of the object, sign or event to come forward again but in a
unique manner. I can make a sign that refers to the umbrella that we saw, but the fact that I remember and refer to the
umbrella again does not bring me back to Seattle. The event cannot be taken back, although I can give back the fondness of my
memory, the affection for my friend, the bittersweet sense of what it was like to be fifteen at that time etc., etc. “Intentional
analysis consists in bringing out what these forms are” (Sokolowski 1984: 117).
An important feature of the first-person perspective has to do with the way it is like to experience something (Nagel 1974).
It is necessary to distinguish between the fact that I intend the umbrella (the intentional matter of the experience) and the
way I intend it (I remember, analyze, compare, judge – the intentional quality of the experience). It is necessary because it
reveals that it is experientially different for me to enjoy the memory of the trip to Seattle than it is for me to be tormented by
it. The fact that every single experience involves a quality of “what it is like” is also a constitutive fact of what it is (like) to be a
person. Similarly, integrational linguistics needs to distinguish between the first-person perspective as the prerequisite of
intending language, and the way that the person in question intends language in particular situations. In order to system-
atically sort out what is involved in what is often rather casually referred to as the contextualization and integration of
different aspects of an activity, it becomes necessary to describe how this process of contextualization and integration un-
folds. It is necessary, if we are to understand its implications for linguistic behavior, action and interpretation. Or rather: we
116 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118

know that it is not possible to step into the same river twice, but when it comes to the issue of repetition, the question remains
to what extent it is possible to relive the intentional qualities of an experience? I believe that a good deal of the allure of
repetition is to be found in the fact that the intentional qualities of an experience can be sought out and relived whether to
provide emotional satisfaction, enhance understanding or improve skills. Integrational linguistics should perhaps be inter-
ested in these implications of the first-person perspective for the way we express, imagine, and interpret language.
Integrational linguistics has correctly argued against theories of intersubjectivity that are founded on the idea of a shared
language within a linguistic community (Taylor 1997c). From a phenomenological perspective, intersubjectivity is tran-
scendental in the sense that our subjectivity stands in a certain relationship to it: “[A]s a constituting subjectivity, I am
directed toward objects whose horizontal givenness and whose transcendence bear witness to their openness for other
subjects. The objects are not exhausted in their appearance for me; rather, there are always alternative perspectives, or co-
intended aspects, that could be perceived by other subjects. Since the appearing object always leaves open the possibility that
it is there for others too, then whether or not such other subjects do in fact appear on the scene, the appearing object refers to
other subjects, and for this very reason is intrinsically intersubjective. It is an entity that does not merely exist for a single I,
but refers a priori to intersubjectivity. And it is for precisely this reason that its constitution can only be elucidated through a
radical implementation of the reduction to transcendental intersubjectivity“ (Zahavi 2001: 52).
It is possible for me and my friend to interactionally intend the same umbrella or to sit next to each other in a concert hall
and intend the same opera by Mozart. But it is not possible for us to have the same experience of that opera. From each our
perspective we intend the same object but what it is like for me to experience Don Giovanni remains inaccessible to my friend.
We can talk about the performance afterwards and we can agree or disagree about the baritone or other aspects. What is
subjectively experienced depends on what is intersubjectively available. It can be interactionally displayed and made
linguistically public, but it cannot be shared. The sign is intersubjective in the sense that it presents itself to both of us. We can
talk about words and other signs, because they are out there in the open, and we can approach them like other phenomena of
the world. But they are also subjective, even private, in that we individually make and contextualize them as they appear to us
or become integrated by us in particular presentations.

5. Existential implications

What are the existential implications of the phenomenon of repetition? People change, but they also look like themselves.
To some extent they stay the same. Identity over time as an existential condition and ongoing drama constitutes a particular
challenge. From an existential perspective, repetition seems to involve a protest, a revolt, a stand against the ephemeral. The
best moments in life are fleeting. To repeat is to insist and sometimes put all of one’s strength into holding back, to retain or
cling to a particular moment and make it last (to some extent writing and photography made that possible). Repetition as a
fruitless attempt becomes the symptom of exactly that which is the insight of integrational linguistics: “The contextualization
provided by succession in time ensures that every linguistic act is integrated into the individual’s experience as a new event,
which has never occurred before and cannot occur again . Repetition, to put the point somewhat differently, is only partial
replication, and even that partial replication is context-bound by succession in time” (Harris 1981: 155).
Another existential aspect of repetition in everyday life and one which is also a theme in much drama and literature has to
do with the way that repetition prevents people from accomplishing what they would like to do and from becoming the
persons they were meant to be. The triviality or predictability of what people do or have to do every day is considered an
obstacle to a life of truth. Repetition becomes the symptom of not being able to move on. It has moral implications for the
protagonist who keeps doing the same (bad) things: drink, gamble, cheat, lie, borrow money etc. Repetition is a curse that
needs to be broken. It is a theme in fine literature (i.e. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov) as well as in popular
culture (i.e. Harold Ramis’ movie Groundhog Day (1993)).
The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, writes particularly well about the existential aspects of repetition. From
Gjentagelsen [The Repetition] (Kierkegaard 1843/1997) we know that repetition is not about the reliving of what was before
but rather about the becoming of what is yet to be. The act of creation in repetition is connected with past actions but it is in
and by itself new. It paves the way into the future and may be experienced as involving freedom. It involves freedom in the
sense that human subjects are free to choose to become themselves. They do not become themselves by doing the same (bad)
things over and over again as described above. Instead “[t]he individual becomes himself by coming to himself, or by coming
back to himself in the movement forward – by regaining himself” (Grøn 1993: 155). The existential implications of Kierke-
gaard’s concept of repetition are that “[i]t is the individual who repeats, and also the individual who is repeated” (ibid.: 154).
Repetition in this sense is a requirement, a responsibility, and a courageous act. It is what is needed to break the curse.
Repetition is at once part of the problem and the solution to the problem. It has to do with “a person’s wish to remain in
continuity with himself” (ibid.: 149–150). Repetition “consists in repeating something which has been lost” (ibid.: 149).
Kierkegaard himself puts it this way: “[t]he dialectic of repetition is easy, because that which is repeated has been, or else it
could not be repeated – but precisely the fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new” (Kierkegaard, 1843;
cited in Grøn 1993: 150).
From the perspective of integrational linguistics what is new is the making and contextualization of signs situationally
constituted as somehow experienced before, as somehow part of the individual’s historicity. The spatial and temporal
integration of what is about to happen with what has already happened is fundamental to the epistemology of integrational
linguistics and it has to ask itself why. I suggest that it has to do with the existential issues of what it means to be a human
 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118 117

being who communicates, narrates, chooses, decides and acts. The existential aspects of the phenomenon of repetition point
to the foundations of our being in the world and explain the predominance of the phenomenon of repetition in our everyday
lives.
If the old oak at the corner is to become a sign to turn left, the old oak primarily appears to me as a call for action. The sign
achieves its perceived identity from the way I integrate my previous experiences with it into the present circumstances. In
contextualizing the immediate appearance of the old oak as a sign to turn left I also make up for the mistake I made the last
time I was here, when I missed it. The old oak becomes the same sign to me even when it appears to me in different guises, as
magnificent and beautiful in the spring and gnarled and sinister during the winter. It has identity in manifold. That means that
whenever I approach the old oak its sameness comes forward and presents itself to me. In spite of its differences of form I
uphold this identity in constituting the sign. By intending it in this manner I renew the sign as a particular sign. It can appear
to me again on different occasions and thus be repeated by me when I constitute it again. In principle it is not the same sign,
but it appears to me as the same sign: “It identifies itself in such presentations” (Sokolowski 1984: 123).
If there were no correlation between signs and objects in the world as experienced, we would become alienated and our
trust in each other and in our judicial, political and societal institutions would break down. Tyranny would threaten. This was
the insight of George Orwell who understood language as “an institution we control. We need scepticism – just enough of it to
keep us on guard against those who would take control over us, but never forgetting that one very powerful way they might
do this is to encourage us to be so sceptical that we do not even believe we are being controlled. If we want to remain free, we
must be sceptical about everything, including, paradoxically, scepticism itself. It can be meaningful only so long as we do not
paint ourselves into the corner of being sceptical that 2 þ 2 ¼ 4” (Joseph et al. 2001: 42).
In refusing to accept the idea of the reinstantiation of form-meaning pairings that to some extent secure and stabilize the
norms, conventions, traditions, and institutions that protect democratic societies, it becomes the particular responsibility of
integrational linguistics to provide an alternative understanding that does not end up in destructive relativism or solipsistic
nonsense. It is an existential challenge to be able to connect linguistic expressiveness with the world as experienced. If we are
to be recognizable to ourselves we also need the signs we constitute to be reliable. Sign-making is not only a communicational
issue but an existential one. The stability of the sign is our stability. It projects itself toward the future, and the affirmation of
the sign is an affirmation of ourselves as essentially trustworthy and communicationally competent.

6. Conclusion

In this article I have argued that phenomenological analyses of the first-person perspective substantiate the contention of
integrational linguistics that language-making is individual, time-bound, and creative in highly complex ways. Language-
making serves immediate as well as staggered communicational purposes and involves the contextualization and integra-
tion of communicational acts into everyday patterns of practice. The spatio-temporal embeddedness of the agent in particular
communicational circumstances is accompanied by the inner time-consciousness that structures action, perception, and
contextualization. Integrational linguistics investigates linguistic experience. Linguistic experience is constituted by the sense
of unity, continuity, and self-awareness provided by the inner time-consciousness. The inner time-consciousness is a
fundamental feature of the first-person perspective.
Phenomenological analyses also explain the (linguistic) experience of repetition. It has to do with the co-intending of what
is absent (the past event) and what is present (the current communicational activities). To perform an act of linguistic
repetition is to recognize identity in the different appearances of the intended sign. It is not a question of reinstantiating form-
meaning pairings but of integrating one’s own analytic reflection and relevant communicational history into new and
different circumstances. Even though signs are not left behind in their material manifestations, they become contextualized
and recontextualized by individuals who intend again what they seem to have met before. The object, action or sign to be
repeated does not present itself (again) in a neutral or objective manner, but is tied to the intending subject. The intending
subject and the intended object can be distinguished but should not be studied separately. It feels a particular way to intend
and make the sign again. The sign has expressivity and identity as it is tied to the individuality of linguistic experience.
Linguistic repetition is thus a response to one’s own communicational history. Acts of repetition presuppose the reflexivity of
language, and they deal with it through processes of reification. Language is embodied. Individuals do not attach values to the
signs they make as they go along. Signs, instead, are already meant when they are made. We can ask metalinguistic questions
when we doubt what we hear, but usually signs are transparent to their makers. These are some of the conditions that need to
be taken into consideration when critically examining linguistic repetition and its existential implications.

References

Benson, B.E., 2003. The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Cambridge University Press.
Branagh, K., 1988. Henry V. In: Jackson, R., Smallwood, R. (Eds.), Players of Shakespeare 2. Further Essays on Shakespearean Performance by Players with the
Royal Shakespeare Company. Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, J., 1990. Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press.
Bybee, J., 2006. From usage to grammar: the mind’s response to repetition. Language 82 (4), 711–733.
Donald, M., 2001. A Mind So Rare. The Evolution of Human Consciousness. W.W. Norton & Company.
Duncker, D., 2011. On the empirical challenge to integrational studies in language. Lang. Sci. 33 (4), 533–543.
Duncker, D., 2019. The Reflexivity of Language and Linguistic Inquiry: Integrational Linguistics in Practice. Routledge.
118 B. Perregaard / Language & Communication 86 (2022) 111–118

Duncker, D., Perregaard, B., 2017. Communication: creativity and continuity. In: Duncker, D., Perregaard, B. (Eds.), Creativity and Continuity. Perspectives on
the Dynamics of Language Conventionalisation. U Press, København, pp. 7–33.
Gratier, M., Apter-Danon, G., 2009. The improvised musicality of belonging: repetition and variation in mother-infant vocal interaction. In: Malloch, S.,
Trevarthen, C. (Eds.), Communicative Musicality. Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship. Oxford University Press, pp. 301–328.
Grøn, A., 1993. Repetition” and the concept of repetition. Tópicos 5, 143–159.
Harris, R., 1981. The Language Myth. Duckworth, Gerald Duckworth & Company Ltd.
Harris, R., 1986. Signs, Language and Communication: Integrational and Segregational Approaches. Routledge.
Harris, R., 1998. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. Pergamon, Elsevier Science Ltd.
Heidegger, M., 1927/2010. Being and Time. SUNY Press translated by J. Stambaugh.
Hymes, D., 1996. Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality. Toward an Understanding of Voice. Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Jakobson, R., 1960. Concluding statement: linguistics and poetics. In: Sebeok, T.E. (Ed.), Style in Language. The MIT Press, pp. 350–377.
Joseph, J.E., Love, N., Taylor, T.J., 2001. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II: The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century. Routledge.
Kierkegaard, S., 1843/1997. Gjentagelsen [The Repetition]. Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, bind 4. Gads Forlag.
Labov, W., Waletzky, J., 1967/1997. Narrative analysis. Oral versions of personal experiences. J. Narrat. Life Hist. 7 (1–4), 3–38.
Love, N., 1990. The locus of languages in a redefined linguistics. In: Davis, H.G., Taylor, T.J. (Eds.), Redefining Linguistics. Routledge, pp. 53–117.
Malloch, S., Trevarthen, C., 2009. Musicality: communicating the vitality and interest of life. In: Malloch, S., Trevarthen, C. (Eds.), Communicative Musicality.
Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship. Oxford University Press.
Mandler, J.M., 2004. The Foundations of Mind. Origins of Conceptual Thought. Oxford University Press.
Meltzoff, A.N., 1995. Understanding the intentions of others: reenactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Dev. Psychol. 31, 838–850.
Meltzoff, A.N., Moore, M.K., 1998. Infant intersubjectivity: broadening the dialogue to include imitation, identity and intention. In: Bråten, S. (Ed.), Inter-
subjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny. Cambridge University Press, pp. 47–62.
Nagel, T., 1974. What is it like to be a bat? Phil. Rev. 83 (4), 435–450.
Pablé, A., Hutton, C., 2015. Signs, Meaning and Experience: Integrational Approaches to Linguistics and Semiotics. Walter de Gruyter.
Perregaard, B., 2017. First-order reality and reflexive practices in children’s language development. Lang. Sci. 61, 64–73.
Perregaard, B., 2018. The dynamics of interactional and intentional pattern formation in children’s language socialization. Lang. Commun. (62), 39–50.
Perregaard, B., 2022. The Love Letters. Ethnopoetics and echoes of the past in a Danish spoken narrative of personal experience. Text Talk 2022, 1–20.
Reddy, V., 2008. How Infants Know Minds. Harvard University Press.
Rosenthal, V., 2004. Microgenesis, immediate experience and visual processes in reading. In: Carsetti, A. (Ed.), Seeing, Thinking, and Knowing. Meaning and
Self-organization in Visual Cognition and Thought. Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 221–244.
Ruin, H., 2018. Historicity and the hermeneutic predicament: from Yorck to Derrida. In: Zahavi, D. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phe-
nomenology. Oxford University Press, pp. 717–733.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G., 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 4 (50), 696–735.
Sepp, H.R., Embree, L. (Eds.), 2010. Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics. Springer Netherlands.
Sokolowski, R., 1984. Intentional analysis and the Noema. Dialectica 38 (2/3), 113–129.
Sokolowski, R., 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, T.J., 1997a. Roy Harris and the philosophy of linguistics. Lang. Sci. 19 (1), 1–5.
Taylor, T.J., 1997b. The origin of language: why it never happened. Lang. Sci. 19 (1), 67–77.
Taylor, T.J., 1997c. Theorizing Language. Pergamon, Elsevier Science Ltd.
Taylor, T.J., 2010. Where does language come from? The role of reflexive enculturation in language development. Lang. Sci. 32, 14–27.
Taylor, T.J., 2012. Understanding others and understanding language: how do children do it? Lang. Sci. 34, 1–12.
Tomasello, M., 2003. Constructing a Language. Harvard University Press.
Toolan, M., 1996. Total Speech. An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language. Duke University Press.
Zahavi, D., 2001. Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. A Response to the Linguistic-Pragmatic Critique. Ohio University Press.
Zahavi, D., 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective. MIT Press.