When you write, you not only make statements about your subject matter, but also make statements about your text (including references to graphic elements like figures or tables). Such statements show your reader how you structure your argument, how your analysis will progress, or how you view the content. In this way you help readers to orientate themselves in your text and guide their understanding of what you have written. Such statements are called ‘meta-language’: they are statements you make about your own writing.
Types of Meta-Language
In academic writing, meta-language can range from outlining your essay or thesis in your introduction, to referring to tables or graphic elements in the later sections or chapters. Please see in the examples below some of the forms that meta-language took in writing by Oxford students. It is also noteworthy that types of meta-language are selected depending on whether you are taking a ‘narrative’ or ‘completed document’ approach. For more on this, see: Meta-Language: Introductions & Tense Choice
Meta-Language in Introductions
In the introduction to a piece of writing, you set the tone as to which meta-language approach you will be taking in this work. From a temporal (or tense) standpoint, the choice can be characterised as one between a ‘narrative’ approach or a, more systematic or scientific, ‘completed document’ approach. Please consider the examples Oxford below to explore the inter-relationship between meta-language and tense choice:
Types of Meta-Language
Aims or Objectives
Often found in introductory sections to prepare readers for coming content
This thesis provides an overview of micro-level mechanical testing of the BN interphase in SiCf/BN/SiC composites.
We should consider the different ways in which the rule of law can be realised within a legal system, and, in the particular focus of this thesis, within the EU legal system.
The overall aims of the thesis can therefore be summarised as follows: [Bulleted list follows]
Organisation
Writers may guide readers to coming or past content
In this final chapter, I summarise the conclusions of the thesis, …
Chapter 2 investigates the behavioural consequences of attentional shifts and examines how these can be modulated.
The tools used to conduct the study are the global atmosphere-ocean coupled model HadGEM2-ES (Section 2.2).
Chapter 5 presented the development of geochemical techniques – specifically radiogenic isotopic analysis (87Sr/86Sr) of driftwood as a provenance tool.
Contribution to the research field
Often used in concluding sections when writers self-evaluate
This thesis offers vital insights into the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie shifts of attention between our perception of the external world and the representations thereof in working memory.
Some key results from this project include: [Bulleted list follows]
In the course of this research, I also proved a Wick-type identity …
This thesis has been an examination of a care sector under increasing pressure from a variety of factors.
Introductions and Tense Choice
Example 1 – Narrative Approach
[Source: Social Science Undergraduate Tutorial Essay]
“This essay will analyse Chinese citizens’ attitudes towards four major international powers: the EU, the United States, Russia and Japan. The major characteristic of an attitude is its affective nature. An ‘attitude’ is therefore ‘the amount of affect for or against some object’. Ajzen and Fishbein, as well as others, restrict the term to an individual’s evaluation of an object, and reject the three-componential conception of an attitude, in which the concept is made up of cognitions, affects and behaviours. Having considered these restrictions, we will seek to make a clear distinction between attitudes on the one hand and cognitions and behaviour on the other. For both contribute to conceptual clarification and the explanation of attitude formation and change.”
Analysis:
This style is characterised by future tense in the outline of the introduction and a focus on the temporal development of your thinking/research throughout the paper (i.e. “it has earlier been established that…”).
Effect
The text is presented as set of events or a process which takes place over time. In this view, the introduction comes first, then the second argument/section/chapter, and so on, until the conclusion, which is the final event. Put another way, your work is presented as a story or narrative of sorts. It implicitly presents your ideas as a causal, or linear, chain and the reader feels compelled to read the first part before the second part, and so on.
It is most common in undergraduate and early graduate writing.
