Expanding on my previous work (Penry Williams, 2019a, 2019b), this paper examines mechanisms of metapragmatic evaluation, presenting a framework for analysing folklinguistic accounts. The focus is particularly on how everyday talk about talk provides complex evaluations of local types, social categories and stances. Previous discussions have shown that a lack of distinct vocabulary (e.g., Niedzielski & Preston, 2000) or different use of language (e.g., Wolfram, 2007) does not prevent effective discussion of linguistic forms. However, such accounts of language remain largely dismissed based on such factors, rather than understood in their own terms for the insights that they provide (Penry Williams 2019a; Leone-Pizzighella & Rymes, 2018). This has resulted in folklinguistic accounts being underexamined. First, the problematic separation of implicit and explicit metalanguage is discussed and an alternative division based on metapragmatics presented: mention or voicing. This highlights the importance of attending in detail to metalinguistic discourse. The focus of the rest of the paper is on these mechanisms, showing that voicing can unify a range of sociolinguistic phenomena not reconciled in the literature, such as mock varieties (e.g., Chun, 2004; Hill, 1999) and performance speech (Schilling-Estes, 1998). Furthermore, these can be systematically differentiated as sub-types of voicing using Goffman's (1981) divisions of the speaker role and Bakhtin's (1981, 1984) double and vari-directional or unidirectional voicing, and considering both the immediate and wider contexts of the utterance. Points are exemplified using extracts of interviews of Australian English speakers discussing Australian English but the findings are applicable across a range of communicative settings. This paper thus provides a framework for examining talk about talk for insights into social life, emphasising the need for analysis to look more closely at folklinguistic discourse.
