24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
A '[[metalanguage]]' is a [[linguistic]] term for a type of [[language]] that can be used to describe (or analyze) (the properties of) another [[language]] (or [[symbolic]] [[system]]).
"[[Metalanguage]]" is the technical term in [[linguistics]] for any form of [[language]] which is used to describe the properties of [[language]].
==Roman Jakobson==
[[Roman Jakobson]] includes the metalingual function in his list of the functions of [[language]].<ref>Jakobson, 1960:25</ref>
((More generally, any descriptive [[discourse]] such as [[literary criticism]] can be said to function as a [[metalanguage]].))
==Jacques Lacan==
[[Lacan]]'s first reference to [[metalanguage]] comes in 1956, when he echoes [[Jakobson]]'s view on the metalingual function of all [[language]]:
<blockquote>"All [[language]] implies a [[metalanguage]], its already a [[metalanguage]] of its own register."<ref>{{S3}} p. 226</ref></blockquote>
In 1956 [[Jacques Lacan]] reaffirms [[Jakobson]]'s view on the metalingual function of all [[language]]: "all [[language]] implies a [[metalanguage]], its already a [[metalanguage]] of its own register."<ref>{{S3}} p. 226</ref>
A few years later, in 1960, he says precisely the opposite, arguing that "no [[metalanguage]] can be spoken."<ref>{{E}} p.311</ref>
However, in 1960, [[Lacan]] states the opposite, arguing that "no [[metalanguage]] can be spoken."<ref>{{E}} p.311</ref>
What [[Lacan]] appears to mean by this remark is that, since every attempt to fix the meaning of language must be done in language, there can be no escape from [[language]], no 'outside'.
This is reminiscent of Heidegger's views on the impossibility of exiting "the house of language."
This also appears similar to the structuralist theme of ''il n'y a rien hors du texte'' ('there is nothing outside the text'), but it is not the same; [[Lacan]] does not deny that there is a beyond of [[language]] (this beyond is the [[real]]), but he does argue that this beyond is not of a kind that could finally anchor meaning.
There is, in other words, no transcendental signified, no way that language could "tell the truth about truth."<ref>{{Ec}} p.867-8</ref>
The same point is also expressed in the phrase; "there is no Other of the Other."<ref>{{E}} p.311</ref>
If the Otheer is the guarantee of the coherence of the subject's discourse, then the falsity of this guarantee is revealed by the fact that the guarantor himself lacks such a guarantee.
In a clinical context, this means that there is no metalanguage of the transference, no point outside the transference from which it could be finally interpreted and "liquidated."
---
[[Lacan]] rejects the very possibility of a metalinguistic dimension, denies the [[existence]] of any [[metalanguage]].
