Meaning & use
metanarrative
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Meanings
nouncountablespecialist
An overall story that claims to explain history, society or knowledge as a whole, such as progress or the triumph of reason.
Grammar: Countable: a metanarrative, grand metanarratives.
Patterns
- a metanarrative of something
The metanarrative of progress shaped nineteenth-century thinking.
Postmodern writers distrust any single metanarrative.
The book challenges the metanarrative of national greatness.
nouncountablespecialist
A story or comment that refers to the act of storytelling itself, within a work.
Grammar: Used about books and films that discuss their own telling.
The novel contains a metanarrative about writing.
The film adds a metanarrative with its narrator.
A metanarrative runs through the author's footnotes.
Word forms
| plural | metanarratives |
|---|
Common combinations
- grand metanarrative
- He rejected the grand metanarrative of history.
- challenge a metanarrative
- Scholars challenge the dominant metanarrative.
- dominant metanarrative
- The dominant metanarrative ignores minorities.
- metanarrative of progress
- The metanarrative of progress dominated the era.
- reject metanarratives
- Postmodernists reject metanarratives.
Synonyms and how they differ
- master narrative
- Master narrative means the same and is common in history and sociology.
- grand narrative
- Grand narrative is the same idea, from Lyotard's term, and is slightly more common.
- overarching story
- Overarching story is plain English and less technical.
- ideology
- Ideology means a set of beliefs, not specifically a story.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: metanarrative or metaphor?
metanarrative vs metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech; a metanarrative is a large story.
Practice
A postmodern thinker who distrusts every metanarrative would doubt ___.
Choose one answer.
A metanarrative claims to explain everything. Postmodernists doubt such broad explanations, not ordinary reports.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “metanarrative”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.