Metalanguage and Identity

From Narration to Reflection

Metalanguage and Identity cover

Description

How does language attain to rear view reflection and then timeless analysis? How does language garner its conceptualisation in order to do this?

This book is an exploration of the process in which everyday narrative language can become reflective and then analytical. Narrative language is viewed as a way of 'becoming' within the flow of time and therefore life.

Evans and Herat show that there are levels in language that correspond with conceptual structures existing in the mind and in wider society, which shape the formation of a metalanguage. They explore how metaphor is an important creative tool in raising language to a more conceptual level in the constitution of a metalanguage. The book considers the development of different strands of metalanguage, for example, mind-based logic, physically based metaphor and universal grammar, to provide a fuller account of language and identity by challenging sweeping existential accounts of language.

By studying the formation and application of metalanguage, the authors show it can help develop a more questioning, dialogic critical pedagogy in education to accustom students to develop critical awareness.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Introduction
Part I: Language and Being
1. Philosophy of Language
2. Language as Stream of Consciousness
Part II: Linguistic Development
3. Levels and Hierarchies of Language: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
4. Language and Urban Discourse as Subjective Experience
5. Cognitive Linguistics
Part III: The Development of Metalanguage
6. Towards a Metalanguage
7. The Reflective Process
Part IV: Pedagogy
8. Being and Becoming; Sameness and Difference
9. Metalanguage, Ethics and Curriculum
10. Metalanguage and Critical Pedagogical Discourse
Conclusion
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 18 Sep 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 224
ISBN 9781350497870
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 8 bw illus
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

David Evans

David Evans is Honorary Research Fellow in the Fac…

Author

Manel Herat

Manel Herat is Senior Lecturer in English and Ling…

Related Titles

Environment: Staging