Combined Face And Body Commitment Of Affect

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 35):

A good example of a combined face and body commitment of affect in the vlog we are drawing our examples from comes as the vlogger is complaining about being hassled for her parking spot before she is ready to leave. The relevant tone groups are presented here, and we will return to this example in our discussion of mime in Chapter 7 (for a complete phonological analysis of this phase of the vlog, see Appendix B6). At this point we are simply interested in the way the vlogger’s facial expression and arm position are used to express the hassler’s exasperation (79).

(76) //3 some / guy was
(77) //3 sitting there and there was
(78) //3 cars be- / hind him and he was like
(79) // [mimics man’s gesture and expression]
(80) //1 ^ like / waving me / out… //

Blogger Comments:

This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): An Epilinguistic Projection Of Protolinguistic Body Language.

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, the relation between expression ('face and body') and content ('affect') is realisation, not commitment.  'Commitment' is Martin's misunderstanding of instantiation, as previously explained here.

…

[3] To be clear, this expression of exasperation realises ATTITUDE, not because it expresses an emotion, but because the exasperation enacts an assessment (of the speaker by a motorist).

In terms of Cléirigh's original model, contrary to the authors' interpretation, the motorist's ATTITUDE is realised in protolinguistic body language, not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent" paralanguage).  The gesture is a manifestation of a conscious state that functions socio-semiotically.

The vlogger's mime of the motorist's body language, on the other hand, is an instance of epilinguistic body language in which she projects the motorist's protolinguistic body language that assesses her.