I am at a conference this week on assessing the fidelity of patients' stories. One of our readings mentions "metastories," which I don't find in Onelook. Sites in Google use the word in reference to telling stories, but what does it mean? Is this a new coinage or have I just missed seeing it?

Well,the prfix "Meta-" usually has to do with change of position or situation (such as in metamorphosis).

Maybe a meta-story is one that changes its slant or viewpoint as the patient feels is necessary.

By analogy with meta-analysis, and perhaps metaphysics, metastories ought to be, rather than the patients history, how they tell about giving a history, perhaps how it evolves over time and from observer to observer..

Sounds like a bit of a stretch. Especially since the lecturer was talking about patients talking about giving a history...is that a meta-meta-story?

"I never metastory I didn't like." (after W.C.Fields, I think...)

[Edit: Nope. Will Rogers. See, jo?]

Different from a back story?

In mathematics and computer sciences, meta- has come to mean something like moving up a higher level of abstraction. Metamathematics is mathematics about mathematics, and a metalanguage is a language that describes how to create a language. So perhaps a metastory is a story about stories.

A mad metapoet
With nothing to say
Wrote a made metapoem
That started this way:

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"A mad metapoet
With nothing to say
Wrote a made metapoem
That started this way:

quote:

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'A mad metapoet
With nothing to say
Wrote a made metapoem
That started this way:

quote:

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"A mad metapoet
With nothing to say
Wrote a made metapoem
That started this way: ... " ' "

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[Aside to jheem: pooh! ]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hic et ubique,

Is a "made metapoem" a metapoem that whacked some other goodfella metapoem? ("Ha ha! It's toitles, all da way down!")

I'll bet metastory refers to a person's 'big picture' of his life. For example, the individual stories may be about a fight with his wife, how his parents treated him, or an anecdote about high school, but the metastory is that no matter what he does, his work is never appreciated.

I suppose the real moral of this tale is that Bullshit, as ever, baffles brains!

Talk a load of unintellible nonsense and you'll sound impressive - even if nobody understands you!

Me? I'd sooner talk sense!

I suppose the real moral of this tale is that Bullshit, as ever, baffles brains!

Oh, I don't know. It seems an easy enough concept to grasp and a simple enough coinage (i.e, the prefix meta- has a pretty standard meaning in English). The thing that most outsiders see as deliberate obfuscation on the insiders' part, is usually the need for an extended vocabulary. This is obvious if you're part of the in-group. I have heard and used a lot of computer jargon that would be incomprehensible to most laypeople when the latter were not anywhere about to hear said conversation, for example, metadata and meta-object protocol (MOP). Same goes for linguistics, psychology, medicine, the law, lexicography, etc.

I think that it refers to the semantics of the story - the meaning of the meaning. Thus do I concur with neveu. Now, Kalleh, if you think I'm wrong, you can apply your metatarsals to my coccyx!

A metalanguage is a language used to describe language i.e. a system of symbols used to describe another system of symbols. The meta prefix, here, means transcending or more comprehensive. A metalanguage describes the subject at a higher level of abstraction.

With a metastory you look not at the individual instances of subject stories, but the common patterns. Think of Georges Polti's 36 dramatic situations. Each of these patterns is a template for a drama. They are the novelist's metastories, a language to describe plots.

Quote "...Oh, I don't know. It seems an easy enough concept to grasp and a simple enough coinage (i.e, the prefix meta- has a pretty standard meaning in English..."

Except that it's clearly not that simple since we have had a range of different definitions from a number of reasonably erudite people!

I suspect that the person who used the term to Kalleh doesn't really know what it means either!

Except that it's clearly not that simple since we have had a range of different definitions from a number of reasonably erudite people!

Well, it might help to see the word in the context of the paragraph in which it occured, before assigning the label bullshit to it.

Sorry, I should have given the context...I have been "conferencing," however.

This comes from chapter 7 in "Doctors' Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge (Kathryn Hunter). The chapter has an interesting title: "Patients, Physicians, and Red Parakeets: Narrative Incommensurability." The title refers to the Bororos of South America who assert that they are or will become upon death, the red parakeets that are so plentiful in their part of the world. We, however, cannot understand their story...it being the "epitiome of incommensurability."

Now, here is where "metastory" is used in this chapter: "The construction of a metastory about the patient's story interprets the events of illness, testing them against the taxonomy of diagnostic plots and settling on one that is sufficiently likely to warrant therapeutic intervention."

Ummmmm, Kalleh, have you tried running that through a translation program?

As I said, Bullshit baffles brains and it's quite a while since I've seen a passage containing so much of it.

And, is it not amazing, the author, Kathryn Hunter, is supposed to be writing about communication!

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And, is it not amazing, the author, Kathryn Hunter, is supposed to be writing about communication!

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If the author was directing her book to the general public this would be fair criticism. It is a technical work that presupposes some domain knowledge. Communication is about transferring information from a sender to a receiver. A language (or set of symbols) is used to encode the message. If the receiver cannot decode the message then communication breaks down.

If I were to write a technical book about communication it would presuppose an entirely different toolkit of definitions and jargon. I would take for granted a knowledge of Shannon's theorem and would use terms like entropy and redundancy in the context of information theory. It would sound like bullshit to the uninitiated.

I don't think the problem with Kathryn Hunter's communication necessarily lies in her her ability to encode the message. The choice of her book as a text may have been inappropriate for the conference attendees.

If the author was directing her book to the general public this would be fair criticism.

Yes, Virge, what I was trying to say above. You did a much better job. Thanks.

The Hunter passage seems fairly clear in meaning to me, though rather wordy, and as an editor I'd question the choice of some of those words.

The expression 'meta-X' is well-established and productive as meaning 'X about X', so I understand a metastory as a story about a story. It's not a description of a story or an analysis of a story: and in that passage I'd question whether she means the description or analysis is actually a story about the patient's story except in the loosest sense. As the context indicates that practitioners do consider their ruminations 'stories', the usage is evidently not hers, so is presumably clear to her audience.

Surely Virge and jheem are right here that this is professional book mostly to be used by physicians.

and as an editor I'd question the choice of some of those words.

Interesting to hear that you are an editor, aput. I don't know what kind, but I have noticed that professional editors are much less scathing of authors who are popular or famous (thus bringing in big bucks), compared to those who are fledgling. It is sad because it is a way of discouraging new writers, but encouraging poor writing.

The title of editor is totally self-appointed.

Quote "...Surely Virge and jheem are right here that this is professional book mostly to be used by physicians..."

Indeed. But at least one of the (very competent) medical personnel at the conference didn't know what the term meant.

In fact, although jargon has a place (goodness know it's common enough in my own field - the travel industry) but this expression wasn't medical jargon. Had it been so then I would have expected the medical personnel at the conference to have understood it and the reat of us not to have done so. As it is, nobody really understood it - although we have had some intelligent guesses.

It is a complex term that has no place in a book about nurse/patient communications. This kind of nonsense happens all too often when people choose complex words to convey simple meanings - often so they can appear clever.

There are very few non-specialist passages that could not be expressed better in plain English rather than complex language.

On those occasions where a complex term is clearly the best, then it makes sense to explain it when it is first used.

Indeed. But at least one of the (very competent) medical personnel at the conference didn't know what the term meant.

The question then remains why s/he didn't ask the lecturer.

Kalleh runs across a lot of words that she posts about. Few of them raise the ire of those here on the board. Again, what is wrong with the word meta-story, which seems to have a simple enough meaning (story about the story) within the context of the quotation. The book in question is about how patients and doctors communicate. I maintain that perhaps the author didn't explain herself well or define her (outsider) terms as she went along (that remains to be proved or disproved), but I'd hardly blame her of bad faith.

"The construction of a metastory about the patient's story interprets the events of illness, testing them against the taxonomy of diagnostic plots and settling on one that is sufficiently likely to warrant therapeutic intervention."

I haven't jumped into any discussions lately as I have been working too hard but I'll add my twopennyworth to this one.

While I can understand what is being said in this passage it looks to me, and I concede I may be wrong, as if the author isn't using insider jargon or technical language but is instead trying to construct a metaphor in which the diagnostic process is likened to writing a story about the disease, or more accurately writing a whole series of stories about the disease and seeing which one has a consistent "plot".

The use of metastory here would imply that the progress of the disease is somehow analogous to a story and the diagnosis to a story about that story. While I understand the sentence this seems to me to be a hopelessly convoluted metaphor of dubious value and even more dubious appropriacy.

Of course what we are doing in this thread is constructing a metametastory about the metastory of the story of the illness.

And anyone who chooses to comment on that last comment will of course be constructing a...

...oh forget it !

It's just turtles all the way down. (5 points for the reference.)

BH today: It's just turtles all the way down. (5 points for the reference.)

Moi Juli 19. ("Ha ha! It's toitles, all da way down!")

Some little old lady discussing metaphysics with James [Berty Russell, Richard Feyman, et al. I see it's a folktale] after a lecture. A goodly discussion of meta can be found in Hofstadter's Goedel Escher Bach, one of the more accessible books on artificial intelligence, and a motherlode of jargon well defined and well used.

The question then remains why s/he didn't ask the lecturer

Interesting point, jheem. Perhaps I should have, though the article had been assigned as a pre-reading, and the presenter didn't mention the word in her talk. I probably would have embarrassed her; I doubt that many in that room, though leaders in health care, would have known that word.

In fact, I imagine they'd be impressed were I to give them a transcript of the replies on this thread!

I have just been reading "Words" by Paul Dickson, (for the gift of which I will always be grateful to Shufitz) and he defines "meta-talk" (thus described in a book by Gerald I Nierenberg and Henry Calero) as referring to the silent messages that are generated when we talk.

In Julius and Barbara Fast's book on the subject they call it "talking between the lines"

On the assumption that a meta-story is similar to meta-talk, I would therefore infer that a meta-story is the story beyond the story.

So my story might be that I am finding it hard to get into work because I can't wake up in the morning. My meta-story might be, though, that I'm can't get up because I am moonlighting to boost my earnings. So my boss isn't going to be able to deal with the problem until he knows what the meta-story is and maybe decides to give me a raise.