The More Transparent Terminology Of 'Sonovergent' And 'Semovergent'

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 22):

The basic distinction here [between ‘linguistic body language’ and ‘epilinguistic body language’] is between paralanguage that converges with the prosodic phonology (i.e. rhythm and intonation) of spoken language and that which converges with meanings made possible by having language. We propose here a more transparent terminology, with phonologically convergent paralanguage referred to as sonovergent and semantically convergent paralanguage as semovergent. This revised terminology is outlined in Table 1.4.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands Cléirigh's model. Linguistic body language does not 'converge' with prosodic phonology and it is not paralanguage. On the one hand, linguistic body language diverges from prosodic phonology, since it involves the use of expression modes other than the vocal tract. What linguistic body language does 'converge' with are the lexicogrammatical systems that are realised by prosodic phonology: primarily the systems of INFORMATION and KEY. For these reasons, the term 'sonovergent' is misleading, because it is untrue.

On the other hand, linguistic body language is, as the name implies, language, not paralanguage, since, like prosodic phonology, it is systematically related to the grammar. As Halliday (1989: 30-1) explains:

Prosodic features are part of the linguistic system; they carry systematic contrasts in meaning, just like other resources in the grammar… . Paralinguistic features … are not systematic — they are not part of the grammar, but rather additional variations by which a speaker signals the import of what he is saying.

For this reason, the term 'paralanguage' is also misleading in this case, because it, too, is untrue. Moreover, the fact that sonovergent paralanguage is neither sonovergent nor paralanguage invalidates the authors' (misunderstanding of Cléirigh's) model.

[2] To be clear, this is misleading because it is untrue. The invented words 'sonovergent' and 'semovergent' are not more transparent, since they obscure the criteria that lie behind the terms 'linguistic' and 'epilinguistic'. And as explained above, the term  'sonovergent' is misleading, because it is untrue.

The motivation for the authors' rebranding of Cléirigh's terms is simply to misrepresent Cléirigh's work as their own. Plagiarism is effected in myriad small steps in this work.

[3] To be clear, on Cléirigh's model of epilinguistic body language, the "convergent" relation is the realisation relation between the expression and content of body language. In considering epilinguistic body language as paralanguage, the "convergent" relation is between the content of body language and the content of language.

It will be seen that the authors' failure to distinguish levels of symbolic abstraction will lead them to devise semantic networks in which the features are expressions (Figure 4.1 p95, Figure 4.6 p108, Figure 4.7 p110) and semantic networks which combine expression features with content features (Figure 4.2 p101, Figure 4.3 p103, Figures 4.4 and 4.5 p105, Figure 4.8 p111)

[3] Here again the authors misrepresent Cléirigh's model as the work of Zappavigna and Martin (2018), which satisfies the definition of plagiarism.

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See also the comments on Martin & Zappavigna (2019):

The Pretext For Rebranding Cléirigh's Body Language Systems As The Authors' Paralanguage Systems