If you're talking about variables in closures, a coworker of mine has a pretty clever way to do it: "var _this = this". It's just a generally useful part of javascript.
I usually do var $that = $(this);, the $ prefix is a Hungarian notation trick that shows variables that have been jQuery'fied.
I find _this and that are the most common ways of referring to the enclosed this. I would avoid using self like the plague because of window.self though.
This is one of the reasons I love CoffeeScript and the fat arrow.