二十世纪四十年代，帕洛阿尔托学派创始人帕特森等学者在符号语用学和精神病理学的启发下提出的“元传播”思想是当时被称为“新传播思潮”的重要概念，对传播研究影响深远，并在当前新媒体语境下衍生出“元媒介”等一批概念。本文通过考察“元传播”的思想谱系，试图厘清其与“神经控制论”与“符号-语用论”的关系，并对 “元语言”到“元传播”理论跃迁的内在逻辑进行剖析。在此基础上提出“帕洛阿尔托学派”作为认知传播符号学研究的早期流派，其“元传播”思想对当前新媒介语境下传播符号学认知转向具有重要借鉴价值。

In 1940s, Bateson, the founder of the Palo Alto Group, was inspired by pragmatics and psychopathology and coined the concept of metacommunication, which later became a core concept of the Palo Alto Group. Though it carried profound implications for communication semiotics and had derived in a group of new terms such as “meta-media” in context of new media, this concept has never been fully discussed by Chinese communication academia. This paper analyses meta-communication by examining its theoretical evolution and revival in the new media era, based on which the paper then tries to sketch the features of meta-media age in a theoretical way.