Online modes of commuication have increased the potential for language users to highlight, and reflect on, features of discourse. Online news users, for instance, may discuss newspaper articles, stimulated by the presence of 'below-the-line' comment boards. In this type of mediatized, asynchronous discourse, commenters regularly orient to terminological choices made by the newspaper or other commenters. The current paper examines user comments on The Guardian Online during the 2010-2011 euro crisis, and has two aims. Firstly, despite the relevance of metalanguage in analysing social relations, its disparate nature has not facilitated a systematic classification. As a first step, the paper provides a quasi-taxonomic assessment of metalanguage oriented towards lexical items. Secondly, the paper discusses specific analytical insights that each category of metalanguage may provide. For example, a heavy use of 'scare quotes' around a certain term may indicate shifting beliefs and levels of trust in the accuracy of the term, or of the news reporting itself. Other types of metalanguage explicitly connect usage of a term to particular social actors, alleging that the term's use indicates bias or attempts at audience manipulation. In this sense, metalanguage often reveals those terms that underlie disagreement between ideologically opposing positions. The paper concludes by arguing that the heightened complexity of online discourse necessitates an analytical shift towards the meta-level of language. This focus will bridge the gap between decontextualized, text-based online settings, and the accompanying inflation of possible stances which participants may assume, or to which they may orient.
