"meta"

Wed Aug 2 14:26:00 UTC 2006

>Here's what I came up with.
>
>I'm still interested in tracing the phrase "that's so meta" -- is it a Buffy
>thing?
>
>(To sign up to receive my weekly "On Language" column by e-mail, go to
>www.nbierma.com/language.)
>
>Nathan Bierma
>Contributing Writer, Chicago Tribune
>Adjunct Professor of English, Calvin College
>
>
>--------------------
>`Meta'-morphosis: It's everywhere
>--------------------

Indeed.  I just came across a reference to "heavy
meta" in a review of an indie movie, and liked
the phrase--but it turns out there are 46,300 raw
google hits on it.

LH

>By Nathan Bierma
>August 2, 2006
>
>Too much meta. That's what Sam McManis wrote earlier this year in the
>Sacramento Bee, talking about the just-released movie "Tristram Shandy: A Cock
>and Bull Story." The movie is "a movie about making a movie of an 18th Century
>comic novel that was about the conventions of novel writing," McManis
>explained.
>
>"How very meta it all is," he added.
>
>That's right: "meta." The prefix has now taken its place as a separate word in
>the English language.
>
>The Oxford English Dictionary defines "meta" as an adjective that describes
>"something that is self-parodying and self-referential in reflecting or
>representing the characteristics it alludes to or depicts."
>
>The OED's entry cites a 1993 article in the
>Boston Globe, which also complained
>about meta in pop culture. The Globe said, "When
>anchorwoman Connie Chung made a
>guest appearance on the sitcom `Murphy Brown' to advise anchorwoman Murphy not
>to sacrifice her journalistic integrity by making a guest appearance on a
>sitcom, that was just plain meta."
>
>Ironically -- or maybe it's meta -- the OED's earliest example of "meta" in
>print, a 1988 article in The New Republic
>magazine, reports that Merriam-Webster
>lexicographer David Justice predicted "meta" would become a word.
>
>"He predicts that, like `retro' -- whose use solely as a prefix is so, well,
>retro -- `meta' could become independent from other words, as in, `Wow, this
>sentence is so meta,'" wrote the New Republic. "If so, you heard it [here]
>first."
>
>Nearly two decades later, the prediction has come true. "Meta has become the
>new irony these days," McManis observed in the
>Sacramento Bee. "It's the trendy
>-- albeit far from new -- pop-culture device perfect for a navel-gazing,
>self-referential populace that wants its entertainment in a continuous loop."
>
>And McManis was writing before the release of the  movies "A Prairie Home
>Companion" -- a movie portraying a fictional radio program, based on an actual
>radio program -- and "Lady in the Water," which has a character named “Story,”
>and features a fictional critic's commentary on some scenes as they are taking
>place.
>
>Maybe because we feel inundated by meta, the word often appears today in
>phrases such as "too meta" and "so meta." The phrase "so meta it hurts" is a
>category at Flickr, the picture-sharing Web
>site. Many pictures in that category
>are pictures of people taking pictures.
>
>I considered writing an article about writing this article, but I thought that
>would just be too meta.
>
>History of the word
>
>This usage is a new twist in the millennia-long history of "meta." The word
>began in ancient Greek as a preposition meaning "after." The word
>"metamorphosis" literally means "after
>transformation." "Meta" is also buried in
>the word "method," which comes from the Greek word "methodos," a compound of
>"meta-hodos" -- literally meaning "journey after."
>
>Aristotle's book "Metaphysics" discusses
>subjects that Aristotle thought should
>be taught "after physics" -- after the natural, empirical sciences, such as
>philosophical questions about existence.
>
>After "meta" was adopted into Latin, and then into English, the prefix came to
>mean "above" or "beyond," possibly because of
>the heady contents of Aristotle's
>"Metaphysics."
>
>"I think that the Greek `meta' was indeed taken and extended [in English],
>probably beyond recognition for a native speaker of ancient Greek," says Helma
>Dik, a classics professor at the University of
>Chicago who specializes in Greek
>linguistics. "But then, the ancient Greeks
>stretched prepositions themselves all
>the time, so after a quick immersion course in
>present-day English I'm sure they
>would be fine with it."
>
>In the late 20th Century, computers gave "meta" new life. Early computer
>keyboards had a Meta key, which controlled the function of other keys (the
>equivalent of the Alt key on a Windows computer
>today, or Command key on a Mac).
>Most Web pages include "meta tags" -- hidden lines of code that describe what
>the page is about and include key words for search engines to find.
>
>But only in the last decade or so has "meta" become a word of its own. It's
>usually used to describe movies about movies,
>journalism about journalism or Web
>logs about Web logs.
>
>Fictional beginnings
>
>This sense of "meta" probably began with the word "metafiction" --
>self-referential fiction, which the Oxford English Dictionary traces to 1960.
>(The OED and the New Oxford American Dictionary
>are the only major dictionaries
>to include a separate entry for "meta" as a word.)
>
>"`Meta' is . . . creeping more and more into everyday conversations, even if
>it's not nearly as widespread as, say, 'irony,'" wrote Laura Miller in the New
>York Times book Review in late 2002.
>
>One opponent of the spread of the word "meta" posted a comment anonymously at
>the Web site called (what else?) MetaFilter (www.metafilter.com).
>
>"The word [should be] either `circular' or `reflexive' or `redundant' or
>`ironic,'" the visitor wrote. "Self-referential isn't remarkable anymore, so
>let's not pretend we have to invent a new word for it."
>
>Too late.
>
>----------
>
>Got a question about asking a question? How meta. Write to Nathan Bierma at
>onlanguage at gmail.com.
>
>Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
>
>http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0608020134aug02,1,1632630.story
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>>>  Nathan Bierma 7/19/2006 6:35 PM >>>
>
>Arnold,
>
>My editor asked me to do something on "meta" as a new slang term (evidently
>meaning "ironic/self-referential," etc.) I
>didn't find anything on ASD-L search,
>and I don't think I can post a query to the listserv without being subscribed
>(which I no longer am, because I couldn't keep
>up, although I've bookmarked the
>weekly archives). Do you mind posting a question on my behalf--and/or your own
>comments--to ASD-L?
>
>
>Note:
>
>last listing at dictionary.com:
>
>Main Entry:   meta
>Part of Speech:   noun
>Definition:   something with refers to itself, esp. in self-parodying manner
>Example:   A movie-within-a-movie is an example of meta.
>Etymology:   meta `beyond'
>
>Source: Webster's New Millennium* Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v
>0.9.6)
>Copyright © 2003-2005 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
>
>
>also see the 1st paragraph
>http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/36696/Column_Column_Puritan_Blister_17
>
>also: Google "so meta"
>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-18%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=%22so+meta%22&btnG=Search
>
>
>Thanks!
>
>Nathan
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org