If metalanguage is a new term to you, you need a refresher, or you simply need a more in-depth explanation of what it means, check out or blog What Is Metalanguage?
Metalanguage is language that describes language. The simplest way to explain this is to focus on Language Analysis (a.k.a. Argument Analysis or Analysing Argument). In Language Analysis, you look at the author’s writing and label particular phrases with persuasive techniques such as symbolism, imagery or personification. Through your description of the way an author writes (via the words symbolism, imagery or personification), you have effectively used ‘language that describes language’.
Here's a list of metalanguage terms, organised by category, that may come in handy in your essay writing.
Character
- Antagonist
- False protagonist
- Major character
- Minor character
- Protagonist
- Secondary character
- Supporting character
Genre
- Adventure
- Comic
- Crime
- Epistolary
- Fantasy
- Historical
- Horror
- Mystery
- Philosophical
- Political
- Romance
- Satire
- Thriller
Form
- Non-fiction
- Novel
- Novella
- Play
- Poetry
- Short story
Language Form
- Blank verse
- Free verse
- ProseIambic pentameter
Narrative Mode
- Alternating narrative view
- First person view
- Second person view
- Third person
- Third person limited
- Third person objective
- Third person omniscient
- Third person view
- Linear narrative
- Nonlinear narrative
- Stream-of-consciousness
Narrative Tense
- Future
- Past
- Present
Plot
- Anti-climax
- Climax
- Conflict
- Denouement
- Dialogue
- Exposition
- Subplot
- Trope-cliché
- Turning point
Setting
- Culture
- Dystopia
- Historical
- Geographical
- Social
- Utopia
Other Literary Techniques
- Active voice
- Allegory
- Alliteration
- Allusion
- Ambivalence
- Ambiguity
- Antithesis
- Antonyms
- Bildungsroman
- Characterisation
- Cliffhanger
- Colloquialism
- Complex sentence
- Compound sentence
- Connotation
- Context
- Denouement
- Diachronic
- Dialect
- Dialogue
- Elision
- English (American)
- English (Australian)
- Enjambment
- Epilogue
- Epiphany
- Euphemism
- Flashback
- Flash forward
- Foreshadowing
- Formal
- Hyperbole
- Idiom
- Imagery
- Informal
- Irony
- Juxtaposition
- Lamb
- Metaphor
- Meter
- Mood
- Morphemes
- Motif
- Neologism
- Onomatopoeia
- Oxymoron
- Paradox
- Parody
- Passive voice
- Pathos
- Periphrasis
- Personification
- Positioning
- Prefix
- Prologue
- Rhetoric
- Rhythm
- Simile
- Simple sentence
- Slang
- Soliloquy
- Stereotype
- Symbols
- Synonyms
- Tautology
- Tone
- Tragedy
- Vernacular
Be sure to check out Part 2 - Metalanguage Work Bank for Films.
