Introspection in language and linguistics.

Different lines of applying or treating introspection in the following limited area are considered: knowledge and usage of language, its investigating in linguistics. Two main positions are advocated: inevitability and significance of introspection for the indicated area; importance of linguistic study of introspection as a constituent of language (regardless of whether introspection is deemed a reliable scientific method or not). In the indicated area, linguists and language users often deal with introspection as a natural capacity, and do not explicitly introduce it among postulates, assumptions, methods, or language data sources. Therefore, the paper considers not only explicit, but also implicit applications of introspection. Linguistics does not formulate any clear differences between introspection and «linguistic feeling», «language feeling», «self-observation», «linguistic intuition». This fact is also taken into account.