Metalanguages of Barthes

Abstract

When the word “metalanguage” was created, the prefix “meta” acquired the connotation of “on”: metalanguage is that what is on top of the language. In Mythologies, the myth is described as a kind of metalanguage: it places itself on top of the object-language and inserts its own ideological meaning. But the intellectual who analyses the myth also uses a metalanguage. The intellectual is marginalised: his critical posture condemns him to stay at the margins of language used by the society. This problem will appear throughout Barthes’s works, but it will be particularly important in Discours amoureux. In the seminars for the preparation of A lover’s discourse: fragments, metalanguage is responsible for the exclusion from the pathos of love. To overcome the problem, the author develops a sophisticated theory. This theory disappears in the published book: the emergence of the pronoun “I” seems to solve this problem. By doing so, however, Barthes transfers the responsibility of the metalanguage to his readers. As we read, the fluctuation of the meanings that Barthes confers to the metalanguage, we realise that his texts offer different ways of seeing the relationships between the metalanguages and their object-languages.