refers to the ability to objectify language as a process as well as an artifact. The concept of metalinguistic awareness is helpful to explaining the execution and transfer of linguistic knowledge across languages Metalinguistics can be classified as the ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language, by using the following skills:
an awareness that language has a potential greater than that of simple symbols (it goes beyond the meaning)
an awareness that words are separable from their referents (meaning resides in the mind, not in the name, i.e. Sonia is Sonia, and I will be the same person even if somebody calls me another name)
an awareness that language has a structure that can be manipulated