Question: Maureen Dowd wrote a review on the recently released movie, “J.Edgar” directed by Clint Eastwood in New York Times November 12 issue under the title, “Dirty Harry meets dirtier Edgar.” Apart from the interest in weird relationship of the FBI’s ‘fearful enforcer’ Edgar Hoover and his protégé, Clyde Tolson, I was caught up with the short phrase, “*It’s sorta meta*,” in the following sentence:

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> Some F.B.I. agents who worked with Hoover have been grousing that portraying the feared first director of the F.B.I. as homosexual would “turn Dirty Harry into Dirty Harriet,” as William Branon, chairman of the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, put it.
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> *It’s sorta meta*: the star who played a fictional law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society makes a movie about a real law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society.
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Dowd’s articles are always ordeal to me because of inclusion of a lot of unfamiliar words to me and her own style of elocution.

I guess “sorta” means simply “a sort of,” but I don’t understand what “It’s sorta meta” means here. It’s a short phrase, but “meta” is an evasive word for me. I’m not even clear with what “meta user” shown on my page of EL&U page means. Would you explain me?

Answer: 
Other answerers have fully addressed "meta", but I'd like to clarify "sorta". It doesn't mean "*a* sort of", it just means "sort of". It's an adverbial. Its purpose is to weaken a statement; "sorta ..." means roughly "somewhat ...", or "partly ...", or "... in a way", or "arguably ...". A synonym is "kinda" (="kind of"). Both are very colloquial, and very vague; I wouldn't recommend them in most writing. (See <http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/sortof.html>.)
esp. @MikeBrown; @JoelBrown; *Ms* Dowd was indeed using *meta* in the sense explained by Barrie England: "a fictional law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society" goes on to "...real law enforcement officer breaking rules for what he sees as the good of society".

However, I don't feel *self-referential* is appropriate here. It's quite different, as the above discussion shows. Modish or not, it seems to be precisely the word that conveys the sense.