Metalanguage

metalanguage, in semantics and philosophy, language used for the analysis of object language (language that is used to talk about objects in the world). Thus, a metalanguage may be thought of as a language about another language. Such philosophers as the German-born Logical Positivist Rudolf Carnap and Alfred Tarski, Polish-born mathematician, argued that philosophical problems and philosophical statements can be resolved only when seen in terms of a syntactical framework. The logic of semantics is what determines the truth of a statement, rather than the statement’s nonformal, or actual, meaning. Carnap felt that by making use of symbolic notation in a metalanguage and by adhering to rules of logic it was possible to avoid metaphysical judgments, which, in his system, were by definition invalid.