Maureen Dowd wrote a review on the recently released movie, “J.Edgar” directed by Clint Eastwood in New York Times November 12 issue under the title, “Dirty Harry meets dirtier Edgar.” Apart from the interest in weird relationship of the FBI’s ‘fearful enforcer’ Edgar Hoover and his protégé, Clyde Tolson, I was caught up with the short phrase, “It’s sorta meta,” in the following sentence:
Some F.B.I. agents who worked with Hoover have been grousing that portraying the feared first director of the F.B.I. as homosexual would “turn Dirty Harry into Dirty Harriet,” as William Branon, chairman of the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, put it.
It’s sorta meta: the star who played a fictional law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society makes a movie about a real law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society.
Dowd’s articles are always ordeal to me because of inclusion of a lot of unfamiliar words to me and her own style of elocution.
I guess “sorta” means simply “a sort of,” but I don’t understand what “It’s sorta meta” means here. It’s a short phrase, but “meta” is an evasive word for me. I’m not even clear with what “meta user” shown on my page of EL&U page means. Would you explain me?
Best Answer
The prefix meta- is used predominantly in scientific contexts, but it has been extended to other areas when it is, in the OED’s words:
Thus metalanguage, for example, is the language used to talk about language. The prefix does, however, appear on its own. The meta section of EL&U deals with issues about EL&U and a meta user is one who uses those pages. Maureen Dowd’s use of it seems to me to be unnecessarily modish. She might have done better to have said self-referential.