Meta level
Meta-level is the loosely used term for a superordinate perspective in which discourses , structures or languages are treated as objects .
If the meta-level takes place in the same structure that it talks about, then there is a case of self-referentiality . New meta levels can always be sought, there is no absolute meta level. What comes into question as a meta level depends on the choice of a methodological perspective. If a systematic examination is carried out on the meta level, the result is a meta theory .
General
At the meta level, generalizations and general structures of the object area of the underlying structure are usually made objects. It examines the principles according to which what occurs at the object level as a single instance occurs. Mixing the (object) level and the meta level is a way of creating self-referential statements or images, which can occasionally lead to paradoxes (e.g. the barber's paradox or the so-called liar antinomy ).
Examples
The theory of science forms a meta-level to science by examining the scientific methods used to study natural phenomena. However, the phenomena themselves do not form a “level”; so science is not a meta-level of nature. The sociology of science regards science as a sociological phenomenon, so it is a meta level for the scientific community (see also meta science ). Now the sociology of knowledge and the theory of science can appear both for themselves and for each other as a meta-level (philosophy of science of philosophy of science, theory of science of sociology of knowledge, sociology of knowledge of theory of science, sociology of knowledge of sociology of knowledge).
In everyday communication , a discussion or dispute that does not deal with specific issues, but with the external framework (speaker, prerequisites, terminology) or internal problems (style of discussion) of a discussion, is referred to as a meta level or metadiscussion. If the metadiscussion and the discussed discussion are carried out by the same speakers, then there is a case of self-referentiality .
In media studies and art - for example in literature and film - one speaks of a meta level if the respective production or creation of a work itself becomes the content of the work. This was already the case with the romantic irony postulated by Friedrich Schlegel .
- Well-known film examples are z. B. 8½ by Federico Fellini and the Blair Witch Project . A “ making-of ” is to be distinguished from this, however , in which filmmaking is not discussed in the work, but about any events from the production process. The examples mentioned are also cases of self-referentiality.
- The well-known picture La trahison des images (literally: “The betrayal of images”) by René Magritte , which has a pipe with the words Ceci n'est pas une pipe. ("This is not a pipe.")
- A case of fictitious self-referentiality occurs in the novel Life and Views of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , famous for this fact .