Review and Prospect of Research on Metalanguage in Educational Field-Based on Visualization Analysis of Keywords With Citespace

Abstract

The forms and meanings of language are significant in the educational field. According to Systematic Functional Linguistics, language has the functions of ideational, textual, and interpersonal. Metalanguage can not only be used to explain the forms of language but also plays an important role in connecting the forms and meanings of language. This paper visually analyzes the research related to metalanguage in the educational field using Citespace, a kind of citation visualization analysis software, and finds out that the number of publications on metalanguage in educational field grew rapidly from 2011 to 2020 and declined gradually, which is presumably caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the clusters of keywords are presented visually and mainly include language awareness, assessment, pedagogy, English language learners, and disciplinary literacy and so on, which represent research focuses in this field. The keywords with the strongest citation burst have Systematic Functional Linguistics, language and pedagogy, which could be the research hotspots in future studies on metalanguage in educational field. This paper hopes to provide future studies about metalanguage and education with a new research perspective.