What is the purpose of the word ‘self’?

Let’s say you have a class ClassA which contains a method methodA defined as:

def methodA(self, arg1, arg2):
    # do something

and ObjectA is an instance of this class.

Now when ObjectA.methodA(arg1, arg2) is called, python internally converts it for you as:

ClassA.methodA(ObjectA, arg1, arg2)

The self variable refers to the object itself.