ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the scope of metalanguage during English language instruction undertaken directly before tertiary studies. While past studies of metalanguage have tended to privilege the analysis of spoken language in the classroom, with particular given attention to linguistic terminology, this chapter explores both language and body language. Methods of classroom discourse analysis focus on interaction between teachers and students during a collaborative writing lesson. Analysis draws on new developments in the theorisation of body language in Systemic Functional Linguistics theory. Findings illustrate how metalanguage may be expressed phonologically as spoken wording and also kinaesthetically as gestures. The gestures in this study, however, appear initially to be dependent on language for meaning, before gradually being used as an alternate and independent form of expression. These findings contribute to a broader conceptualisation of metalanguage that acknowledges a fuller range of semiotic resources used to share and develop knowledge about language in the classroom.
