ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some relationships between emotion and “language about language,” otherwise known as “metalanguage.” I focus on two varieties: talk about language varieties, and talk about forms of talk; that is, talk through which speakers frame certain speech acts, word choices, or forms within a language as more or less desirable or otherwise affectively charged. I exemplify both varieties using data from the descendants of former colonial settlers in Kenya, whose metalanguage is emotionally saturated because connected to their ideas about race.
