An Analytical Exploration of the Conceptual Connotation of Meta Discourse Awareness

Anchored in China’s foreign-language education context, and informed by metacognitive theory as well as Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, this study examines the conceptual connotation of meta discourse awareness. Meta discourse awareness is defined as a metacognitive capacity that guides and optimizes discourse processing through deliberate engagement in the interrelated processes of understanding, evaluation, and regulation across languages, genres, and discourses. It exhibits salient metacognitive properties: metacognitive knowledge provides the cognitive framework and foundation for decision-making, whereas metacognitive regulation, in turn, deepens and updates that knowledge. Acting in concert, the two propel and steer the three core cognitive processes of meta discourse awareness, namely understanding, evaluation, and regulation. Understanding underpins evaluation, evaluation directs regulation, and regulatory outcomes feed back to refine both understanding and evaluation. Operating across the three “trans-” perspectives, i.e. trans-language, trans-genre, and trans-discourse, they empower language users to overcome the barriers of languages, genres, and discourses, flexibly integrate diverse bodies of knowledge, and engage in in-depth discourse processing. Research on meta discourse awareness not only helps extend and deepen the theoretical scope of language awareness research, but also provides theoretical support and practical implications for cultivating foreign-language professionals equipped with native cultural literacy, higher-order thinking, and intercultural communicative competence.