Getting Meta with Meta

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dee Dee Bonwit. I’m calling you from Greenville, Tennessee.

Greenville, Tennessee. Is that in the east?

Very far east, yes.

Oh, near the Smokies.

Yeah.

All right.

In the shadow of.

Oh, great. Well, what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I had heard a word used the other day. I was watching a movie. I was watching that movie, Gone Girl.

And the detective in the movie used the word meta, M-E-T-A.

So, of course, I know several words that start with meta, but I don’t know the word meta.

So I looked it up on my dictionary app, and it wasn’t in there.

So I thought you all might have an answer for me.

Dee Dee, do you remember the context in which it was used?

Oh, boy. I was afraid you’d ask that.

That’s okay.

I’ll go back and watch the movie again.

We’re pretty sure we know what you’re talking about, so we can probably come up with some examples of our own.

So if Martha and I are out for ice cream and we’re talking about this ice cream store and she’s got a big scoop of vanilla and I’ve got a big scoop of chocolate and she starts to talk about what other people are saying about us as we’re sitting there eating our ice cream and then we switch.

And then Martha says, and now they’ve just said, why did they switch their ice cream?

They’re coming with all these conspiracies.

She is talking about the meta narrative.

She is actually giving the meta narrative about us.

So meta is self-referential.

You are talking about the thing that is being talked about or the thing being talked about is talking about itself. Does that make sense?

Yeah, sometimes it’s kind of used just to mean the bird’s eye view or the big picture view or the umbrella view or the parachute view, whatever you want to call it.

So you’re looking at something as if you are removed from the subject and actually aren’t a participant in what is happening. That’s meta.

Yeah, okay, and I know this term because there’s a website that I’ve been a member of for a long time, a part of the community anyway, called meta.

Metafilter, Metafilter.com, which is a discussion forum.

And the whole point of this was this was a place where people could go to discuss the things that were happening in their world, be it a news item or be it something personal or just a hobby or a pastime or something like that.

Yeah, and meta itself is a Greek preposition that means either beside or after.

So you’ll find it in words like metaphysics, metaphysical, and so forth.

But the new word is a little different.

It is an adjective, and you will frequently find it with an intensifier like so.

It’s so meta because it’s slang and colloquial and far removed from the academic world.

Right, and that was the way it was used.

It was that very meta.

Yeah, very meta.

Yeah, very common to do that.

But again, yeah, self-referential talk, all right?

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks for calling, Didi.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Speaking of meta, I went to Chula Vista, California, to give a talk at a library.

And I knew I was in the right place when I pulled into the parking lot and saw a bumper sticker that said, metaphors be with you.

It made me feel right at home.

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