metatextualadj.
/ˌmɛtəˈtɛkstʃʊəl/, /ˌmɛtəˈtɛkstʃ(ᵿ)l/, /ˌmɛtəˈtɛkstjʊəl/, /ˌmɛtəˈtɛkstjᵿl/, U.S. /ˌmɛdəˈtɛk(st)ʃ(əw)əl/ Relating to or characteristic of a meta-text; standing outside a text. Also: non-textual.
ΚΠ
1976 Jrnl. Philos. 73 255 A sentence can also contain metatextual (‘metadiscourse’) operators whose arguments are entry-order ‘addresses’ of words in that sentence.
1979 Washington Post 27 May g1 He is pointedly critical only of ‘metatextual’ jargon, which he describes as ‘the present academic habit of turning literary criticism into technology’.
1989 Appl. Linguistics 10 284 Such metatextual information can probably be treated as a special type of implicature... Metatextual information can be located on various levels of the discourse.
1997 Independent on Sunday (Electronic ed.) 28 Sept. Bird deserves credit for a smart metatextual twist.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, December 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1976