Abstract: Reflection on language per se has become one of the central issues of philosophical pursuit since the beginning of 20th century. A probe into the intrinsic qualities of language is both the embodiment of in-depth development of subjective epistemology and the only way to reveal the formal regularities of language. Comparatively speaking， phenomenology bears more resemblance to structuralism in terms of the epistemology and methodology of language per se in that epistemology tends to criticize empiricism and historicism and methodology prefers the epoche of empirical and historical facts. However， the psychologism of Ferdinand de Saussure implies his incompleteness in dealing with empirical facts and the transcendence of phenomenology over structuralism in revealing the intrinsic qualities of language.

Key words: language per se, Ferdinand de Saussure, Edmund Husserl, methodology, epistemology