Abstract I consider the ontology of languages and the linguistic units said to constitute them, in the light of a speculative sketch of how languaging about language might give rise to the idea of a language. The focus is principally on the role of reflexivity and the development of writing in facilitating the decontextualisation, abstraction and reification of linguistic units and languages themselves. The main trend in modern linguistics has been to take the products of these processes as realia, and to retroject them on to languagers as the basis for their languaging activities: I touch on some of the deleterious effects of this on theorising about the acquisition, storage and production of language. Finally, I consider how in thinking about these matters the concept of different ‘orders’ of language has been and might be interpreted and deployed. Whether or not this concept has a useful role to play in formulating them, the ideas assembled here are offered in the hope that they might serve as a platform from which to debate the significance and implications of the stultifying effect our modes of metalanguaging have so far had on inquiry into our engagement with language.