Metakalbos elementai akademiniuose studentų tekstuose
Elements of Metalanguage in Students’ Academic Texts

Summary/Abstract: Academic texts contain a certain kind of specific speaking – metalanguage, which is deployed by the author in order to explain the language of the text to the reader, to call attention to the more important details of the research and to help better understand its structure. The article is a discussion on the instructions provided in methodical publications for students how elements of metalanguage are expected to be used in their academic texts, especially in final papers. The analysis performed on students’ works (mostly related to social sciences and humanities) indicates that metalanguage elements are the most abundant in their introductory parts – the preface and the introduction. Metalanguage is usually deployed as a means to define the object of the work, the relevance of the subject, the aims and objectives of the work, as well as to describe the composition of the work, materials used and research methods applied. Sometimes a hypothesis is provided additionally. The issue of the research is formulated rather seldom. Apparently, more efforts are put to include all the attributes (elements) that are mandatory for introductory sections rather than on the specific way of metaspeaking, textual composition and cohesion instruments. Metalanguage-related notes that would call the readers’ interest are particularly scarce. Nonetheless, the metalanguage elements applied disclose students’ ability to pay more attention to the essence and completeness of the work, to structurise text and to make descriptions properly.

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