This is the Business English Podcast Episode 369.
What's so meta about Business English?
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Hey, Aubrey, how's it going today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay?
Good. Aubrey, do you like horror movies?
It depends. I like suspenseful movies, but I don't like it when it's super gory.
What about you? Oh, yeah.
Gore. We don't need gore.
We don't need blood.
I feel the same way.
Kind of more like a thriller is what I like.
I like a thriller. But if you were around in the 90s, you couldn't have missed the movie Scream.
Did you see it? Yes.
I saw that in the theater.
I remember. I loved it.
It was really great.
I I don't want it. No spoilers in case you guys haven't seen it.
But there's this very surprising death early in the I was shocked.
You remember that? Yeah, for sure.
The movie pulls out a lot of surprises for sure.
And I was a teenager when it came out.
I feel like I was probably the the age of the characters.
So I also kind of went to see it in the movie.
And you kind of relate when you're the same age and going through the same high school stuff as the character.
So that was a big movie for me.
But did you notice anything that was kind of different about the movie Scream compared to the older classical horror films like friday the 13th or halloween or the exorcist aubry did you notice anything a little different yeah it was super meta right it made fun of its own genre i don't think i noticed
this when i saw it as what an 18 19 year old but i saw it again years later and i remember being like oh this is super clever it's kind of funny how we notice things you know 10 years later 15 years later our brain has developed more and then we see something we didn't see uh i love this so we're going
to do this episode today about based on a listener question and we're going to put it in the context of business english this is a big concept that if our listeners can capture this concept of it's meta what you said aubrey it's super meta what did you mean again by that one more time yeah it's so for that film
it sort of poked fun at its own genre.
Often when something's meta, it's more obviously talking about itself.
So maybe like a play within a play that's making fun of the original play, like something that sort of breaks the fourth wall, as they say, and allows the audience in sort of behind the scenes.
Yeah. Multiple layers to it.
It's more complex. It's more interesting.
So I'm going to go ahead and read the question from our listener from YouTube.
This is from Laura Souza.
some scenarios that would strike you Aubrey as meta?
Well, it's interesting.
If you look at Laura's question, where you said in the episode on a metal, on a meta level, you could have a great connection conversation about this.
Imagine we're talking about like the subjunctive tense and how crazy it is that Americans intentionally use it wrong.
So then you might say on a metal level, you could just have a conversation about how crazy is that, that Americans use this wrong on purpose, right?
And that kind of thing comes up all the time in business English, where you're talking about something that's interesting or ironic, and that creates this great connection skill.
Exactly. And we see this a lot on our All Our English episodes too.
There are often a few takeaways.
We can learn the task, the skill, and then it also leads to something that we can talk about either learning that skill or something related to that skill.
you have this on multiple layers it's kind of the sort of thing where you only you only know it when you see it you know what i mean right right so imagine you're in you're conducting a company meeting about how often you meet as a company yeah right or how often you should meet and someone might be
like this is so meta that we are having a meeting about whether or not we should have a meeting about this a meeting about the meeting and i think the corporate world is famous for that if you've ever worked in the corporate world should have been an email.
I think people get really frustrated that there's a lot of wasted time where having a meeting about a meeting about that meeting, right?
Exactly. Or maybe like a couple is arguing about how frequently they argue.
Like that's kind of meta.
Like, okay, now we're arguing about whether or not we should be arguing about this.
Exactly. And do you think that meta means the same thing as ironic, Aubrey?
What do you think? No, they are different.
Yeah. Something that's meta can be ironic you can say like this is ironic that we are meeting about how many meetings we have each week um when there is self -reference that often is meta without having any irony exactly so they're not the same thing so don't get confused between the two words don't
use them interchangeably again sometimes something that is meta can have irony but it doesn't have to okay um so how exactly well first of all i want to go back up to laura's question and she did ask a question does it mean after and beyond and i wasn't clear on what she meant do you have a sense of what she's
asking there with after and beyond opry i think it was just sort of a misunderstanding of what you meant when you said this on a meta level yes so i think once you understand what you were referring to you were saying like you could actually have a conversation about this about the strategy, about the grammar,
instead of using it in your conversation, you could even talk about how this is weird about English, right?
So it doesn't mean the same as after or beyond.
This has a very specific meaning saying like, this is meta.
This is self -referential.
And often we don't go around looking for these scenarios, but when we see them, we name them.
So now what words do we use to name them?
You know, what do we say?
In that episode, I said on a meta level, but there are other things we can say here.
Aubrey, what would be one of them?
Yeah, you could say, oh, that's so meta.
And we often do this.
We'll just point it out like this is crazy that we are talking about this while we're doing it.
Something that's meta, point it out.
Just say, this is really meta.
Yeah. And just to make sure that our listeners aren't confused, this is not referring to the company formerly known as Facebook.
I don't know where they got that name.
maybe the metaverse is related to the idea of meta it probably is I'm sure it is but we're not going into that as much today but that's a whole thing that's something created by like superhero films and that you know should not exist they are kind of related but it's not as much how it's related to the business
world as just hey oh that's meta I would say it's much more accessible for business English right the scenarios to label them much more accessible for us today So again, another one on a meta level is what I guess I said in that episode.
What else? We can do.
We can get creative here though.
Yeah. We could say we're so meta or you're so meta.
If someone is doing this, right?
If they are sort of pointing out that something is sort of ironic in a way, right?
Then you could say kind of a fun way to be like, oh, you're so meta right now.
You're so meta, right?
It's sort of trendy to say that, or maybe it was a few years ago, or you could say very Very meta.
Very meta. Right. Very meta.
Kind of a smart, fun thing to add if you believe you're witnessing a scenario or participating in a scenario that shows these qualities.
Yes. I agree. This got super trendy a few years ago, but I still hear it.
You guys can still use it.
You're still going to hear it at work on podcasts.
Now you'll have a better understanding of what that means.
I love it. If you're a natural introvert, speaking out in a conversation in English can be stressful.
Maybe at work, you're unsure if people will understand you or you're worried they'll ask you to repeat.
So you stay quiet. Let's finally get over this challenge in 2025.
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Okay, Aubrey, we are back.
So I have one other example that came to mind.
You know, when I did my TESOL course, which is teaching English to speakers of other languages, I studied up in Brattleboro, Vermont and everything we did, what struck me about this course, it was actually incredibly well -run, incredibly high quality.
The trainers were amazing.
They had taught English all over the world.
It was a very intensive course, but everything was meta.
So we learned the methods of how to increase student talking time.
And then the whole training course was set so that we were the students as the students in the course were focused on talking a lot you know we so we were asked to use the methods that we would later have our students use that yes this happens a lot with teaching courses because as you're learning how to
teach of course the teacher is using those methods with the class where you are learning how to teach so it ends up being very meta yeah which is really cool and sometimes you you could really feel it really immerses you in the learning in a way.
So it's kind of a really cool way to do it.
Also makes me think of the phrase, don't talk the talk unless you can walk the walk.
Yes, yes. It reminds me for ESL, my master's degree, there was an art.
It was like art through ESL.
And so everything that they were teaching us to have the students do, we didn't.
Right. We'd like create these art projects.
And so yeah, you've got to be able to walk the walk.
You end up doing some interesting projects for sure.
Absolutely. All right.
So let's see now in a role play exactly how this would come in in just an everyday normal conversation at work, right?
Because there are opportunities to throw this in.
What's the scenario here, Aubrey?
So we work for a large food manufacturing company.
We are having a small team meeting to discuss the way we conduct meetings.
All right. Here we go.
All right. Very meta.
Very meta. All right.
I'll start us. Hey, Lindsay, how was your weekend?
great I watched the movie Scream remember that one oh so 90s I love how meta that movie is agreed all right let's get started team so as we could kick off 2025 I'd like to propose a change in how we conduct our meetings ooh a meeting about our meetings we are so meta yeah so I think it would make sense
to have a different person lead the meeting each week that's an interesting idea why to get more people taking on a leadership role makes sense Nice.
So we had a couple uses of meta here, and you made a comment, and very common when you're commenting on media, music, movies, plays, right?
You said, oh, so 90s, I love how meta that movie is.
So I love how meta that something is.
Yeah. And this is a really a way to, to make a conversation about media, about music, more interesting.
You're going to get a little deeper about because meta it's you're not staying surface level.
Oh, I like that. I like the actors.
You're talking about something that's going to get you into the more interesting part of that movie.
Exactly. A hundred percent.
And then we talked about having a meeting about meetings and you said, Aubrey, we're so meta.
Yeah. So I'm pointing out, Oh, we're having a meeting about meetings.
We are so meta. And this is probably a pretty casual workplace, maybe a small team, right?
Maybe like our team, quite small, quite casual.
Um, you may not like blurt this out in a formal corporate boardroom, right?
I think there are like 20 people there and they're like, you quiet.
We're busy. Yeah. You probably wouldn't.
You probably, but I would say this in one of our meetings.
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
All right. where else can our listeners go to keep listening to all ears english oh they can go over to all ears english actually aubry where can they go yeah we want to make sure you guys caught episode 2327 of the all ears english podcast what's your secret sauce this was really great native vocabulary
so if you're not following all ears english and business english open your podcast player and be sure to hit follow on both podcasts exactly just open the search bar right inside wherever you're listening now, type in All Ears English, hit that follow button, and make sure you're following this podcast, Business
English. Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners today?
Well, this is a high -level concept that something is meta.
It's a trendy term, but you want to be able to comment on it or understand what someone is saying when they say that something is so meta or that on a meta level, like, what does that mean?
This is super native and natural.
Yeah. So don't be afraid.
Once you, again, when you see it, you'll know it, right?
It's that kind of thing.
And when you see it and you know it, you should comment on it if you're in the right scenario.
All right. And use the phrases we taught today to do it.
Build that connection.
All right. So fun, Lindsay.
Thanks for bringing this.
I love this. Yeah. Big topic.
All right, Aubrey, you have a good one.
Take care. See you next time.
Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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