The Acknowledgement Of Sources

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 1, 231):

In this chapter we introduce our social semiotic framework for analysing paralanguage that accompanies spoken English discourse. Our approach draws on the New South Wales Youth Justice Conferencing research consolidated in Zappavigna and Martin (2018).² The foundational unpublished paper is titled ‘Gestural and Postural Semiosis: A Systemic-Functional Linguistic Approach to “Body Language” ’ (by Chris Cléirigh); this model informs work published by Zappavigna et al. (2010), Hood (2011), Martin (2011b), Martin and Zappavigna (2013) and Zappavigna and Martin (2018). Cléirigh’s work drew in part on Matthiessen’s synopses (2004, 2007, 2009) of work on early child language development informed by systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL).

 

² This chapter incorporates material previously published in Martin and Zappavigna (2019).

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading because it gives the false impression that the authors have properly acknowledged their sources.

First, it is misleading to claim that Cléirigh’s work drew in part on Matthiessen’s work, because it is not true. Cléirigh merely noted Matthiessen's distinction between body language and paralanguage in Matthiessen (2007), and his extension of paralanguage to include pictorial mode:

For Matthiessen (2007: 6-7), body language and paralanguage emerge as distinct semiotic systems during the transformation of (multimodal) protolanguage into language during ontogenesis (and phylogenesis). That is, the multimodality of protolanguage is distributed across language, body language (eg facial expressions and gestures) and paralanguage (eg vocal timbre, tempo, loudness), and the instantiation of the three systems is co-ordinated during logogenesis. (Matthiessen (2007: 24-5) also extends the category ‘paralanguage’ to include such visual parameters as font family, type face (“style”), and layout (graphic design).

Second, it is misleading to claim that Cléirigh’s model merely "informs" the work of Martin and his colleagues, because it is not true. The model that Martin and his colleagues use is Cléirigh’s model, though misunderstood, as will be seen. The paper that is strategically omitted here — but acknowledged only 230 pages later in the endnotes — is Martin & Zappavigna (2019), which is the paper that rebrands Cléirigh’s model of body language as the authors' model of paralanguage, as demonstrated here. In this chapter, the authors will continually cite Martin & Zappavigna (2019) as the source of "their" ideas, as will be seen in later posts.

Third, it is misleading to claim that the authors' social semiotic framework is their own, because it is not true. The authors' framework is Cléirigh’s model, rebranded as the authors', again, as demonstrated here.

See also An Approach "Inspired" By Cléirigh’s "Contributions"