[...] after the development taken by logistics in the work of the Polish logicians, one is prepared for the existence of a semiotic whose ‘content plane’ is a semiotic. This is the so-called metalanguage (or, we should say, ‘metasemiotic’), by which is meant a semiotic that treats of a semiotic; in our terminology this must mean a semiotic whose content is a semiotic. Such a metasemiotic linguistics itself must be.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.119-120

[...] any metasemiotic, 'i'. 'e'., [...] any description of a semiotic [...].
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.111

[...] there are [...] semiotics whose expression plane is a semiotic and semiotics whose content plane is a semiotic. [...] we shall call [...] the latter ‘metasemiotics’.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.114

We [...] define [...] a ‘metasemiotic’ as a scientific semiotic one or more of whose planes is (are) (a) semiotic(s).
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.120