Beyond Language, Beyond Awareness: Metacommunication in Instructional Settings

This special issue on ‘metacommunication in instructional settings’ deals with the topic of language awareness in an integrated framework of interaction, context and communication. What brings the four contributions (Kress, Ogborn and Martins; Sarangi; Roberts; van Lier) together is a concern with the relationship between what is communicated in and through language vis-à-vis other semiotic systems and how these different systems are mobilised in the instructional setting for metacommunicative purposes. The instructional setting is broadly defined here to include multiple data sites, e.g. the science classroom which represents the conventional school setting where language awareness research is mainly carried out, and other non-conventional settings such as vocational classrooms, intercultural training programmes and out-of-classroom learning environments. In addition to this extension of language awareness research beyond the school setting, there are several points of departure across the contributions: (1) a different perspective on language as one of the many communicative modes available to participants for information exchange (Kress et al.); (2) the mediating role of talk-in-interaction in indexing situated identities (Sarangi); (3) metapragmatic awareness as a rich resource for intercultural understanding (Roberts); and (4) a conceptualisation of different levels of awareness which are socially and interactionally grounded (van Lier). Before I elaborate how each contribution engages with the metacommunicative functions of language and other semiotic systems, a cursory overview of the notion of metacommunication is in order. Bateson (1972) is among the first to draw our attention to a generic distinction between message and metamessage and to claim that these two levels interact in meaning making and metacommunication. As Tyler puts it: