Definition of metamessage in English:

noun

• An underlying meaning or subtext.

  ‘the ‘metamessage’ of his patronizing tone was that everything baffling her was obvious to him’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The closer their guesses to the actual score, the clearer the metamessage of the text.’
  • ‘What I think does provide ground for complaint is the metamessage the book can be read as embodying.’
  • ‘Emotional responses are often triggered by metamessages.’
  • ‘The Sense of Humor Questionnaire yields three scores: metamessage sensitivity, or ability to recognize humor; liking of humor; and emotional expressiveness, or the tendency to express one's emotions.’
  • ‘That's what makes metamessages so difficult to pinpoint and talk about: They're implicit, not explicit.’
  • ‘But some arguments can be constructive - if family members use them to articulate and understand the metamessages they are intending and hearing.’
  • ‘You start off, as a child, having to be sent explicit messages - metamessages - about what your messages are going to be about.’
  • ‘Acknowledging and responding to metamessages can sometimes be much more important than dealing with the literal ones.’
  • ‘The exhibit is an isomorphic extension of Cage's metamessages to the medium of the museum.’
  • ‘For now, though, it may be enough to understand that framing - and the metamessages that convey it - is an essential, if hidden part of storytelling and all communication.’
  • ‘The disapproval Loraine heard was the metamessage - that is, the implications of her mother's words.’
  • ‘Art in its many forms - poetry, paintings, songs, plays, novels, movies - has a metamessage.’
  • ‘Daughters and mothers agree on what the troublesome conversations are; they disagree on who introduced the note of contention, because they have different views of the metamessages their words imply.’
  • ‘I immediately changed how I talked to people, because the message that was true, the metamessage, was that they were valuable and of worth.’
  • ‘The two continuums frequently overlap, which is what makes it hard to decipher all the metamessages at play in a conversation.’
  • ‘The metamessages are formed from context - the way something is said, who is saying it, or the very fact that it is said at all.’
  • ‘One example of reframing is to metacommunicate - to talk about ways of talking and to talk about any metamessages conveyed.’
  • ‘Sense of Humor Scale, there were no significant effects for emotional expressiveness, liking of humor, or metamessage sensitivity.’
  • ‘One of the key concepts she teaches are metamessages.’