Re: A challenge to the definition of metadiscourse

["Huber, Mike" <mrhuber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

> Caroline Small replied:
> >You didn't invent the word "metatext."  You borrowed it from
> philosophy, as did Mr. Williams (originally cited as using metadiscourse).
...

> From: Ben Kovitz [mailto:apteryx -at- CHISP -dot- NET]
> Actually, I did invent it.  No doubt others before me have
> combined the
> same word elements to mean different things, just as Joseph Williams
> combined different elements to mean the same thing.  If
> others have used the word to mean something in philosophy, that's great.
...

A definition of a word can be one of two things. It can be describe how a
word should be used, and it can describe how a word is commonly used within
a particular group.

I see a certain echo of this duality in the history of the prefix "meta." It
entered the language by way of an appendix. "Metaphysics" is a chapter in
Aristotle's big book of all the knowledge he considered worth having. The
word "Metaphysics" describes the location of the chapter in the book:
"metaphysics" is that which comes after physics.  No deep meaning, it's just
all the stuff that didn't belong in the physics chapter but was related. As
it happens, there was a lot of very good stuff in that chapter. A lot of
stuff that went very deep, a lot of stuff that goes beyond physics. And
considering the state of science a quarter of a {whatever you call ten
millennia} ago, a lot of stuff that is more important than the physics. Yes,
I know that what he called "physics" isn't an exact match to the modern
science, but there is a certain similarity.

"MetaX" probably should go beyond X, go deeper than X. But in the common
usage of the prefix among computer people, it most often means "X about X."

For me, a word (or a prefix) is a symbol and a sound, given meaning by
usage. Its meaning is the intersection (in the set-theory usage of the term)
of what the speaker or writer meant and what the listener or reader
understood. A word may have a great history, a beautiful sound, and just be
a wonderful thing, but it means no more than what the listener gets out of
it. I love certain words, but I write about tools. I write what no sane
person wants to read. I am not a Great Author to be studied. It is, for my
purposes, better to be understood than to be right.

And as for "redundancy", that's not exactly what "X about X" means. For an
extreme example, I've seen manuals that include a section that discusses the
font in which the manual is printed. (I understand certain font vendors
require it, but bear with me.) That is metadiscourse. It is not redundant -
the information is not available anywhere else in the text, and, since the
font in question is a very "quiet" body text font, very difficult to derive
by examining the manual. And the chances of that section being of any use to
the manual's target audience are nil.

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