The third level of the comprehensive presentation of a language again bears a meta-relation to the second level, as it reflects on the description provided. It may be articulated as follows:

The history of research on the language reports such items as first mentions, word lists, school primers produced by native speakers and earlier linguistic descriptions.

The scope and limits of the present description are then critically assessed: Its object is delimited, including the dialect and sociolect under study, and the purpose of the entire presentation is justified with respect to the intended audience.

The data underlying the description and at least partly represented at level 1 of the entire account are assigned their place in the ethnography of communication. They may include spontaneous texts, elicited utterances and reactions to non-linguistic stimuli. The fieldwork setting is described and the informants are named and categorized by relevant sociolinguistic parameters. The methods of recording, transcribing, analyzing and representing data are accounted for.

The structure of the description is the structure of level 2 of the presentation. Its formal aspects include the structure and symbols used in examples, diagrams, tables etc.

If the presentation of the language takes the form of a book, its level 3 will typically take the place of an introduction.