Definition
Metalinguistics as a field of study examines the relationship between language and culture. Metalinguistic skills are strategies that are applied, either consciously or automatically, to an oral or written linguistic interaction to allow one to think about language and a linguistic message, to analyze a message, and to control language processing within the communicative culture (Bialystok 1986). Areas of metalinguistic skills are phonological, word level, syntactic, pragmatic, and print awareness (Lightsey and Frye 2004; Tunmer et al. 1988).
Current Knowledge
In a conversational interaction as a speaker, one uses metalinguistic skills to relate the linguistic form of an intended utterance to the environment in which the utterance occurs in order to produce a message which has the desired effect on a listener. As a listener, one uses metalinguistic skills to understand the intended message of the speaker. Metalinguistic skills are critical for understanding a message in...
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Patterson, J.P. (2018). Metalinguistic Skills. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_898
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