The Semovergent Paralanguage Of PERIODICITY

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 39-40):

As noted in Sections 1.5.1 and 1.5.2.3, however, the vlogger does end the phase with a contrasting high then lowered pitch. The higher pitch penultimate tone group begins rhythmically speaking with a handclap foot and then a foot comprising the ‘filler’ / um /.

This is followed by the low pitch tone group; the vlogger is winding down. Following this there is a suspension of both language and paralanguage as her eyes shut and her head slumps forward (88).

The preceding phase to the one we are using to explore sonovergence here ends in a similar way (lowered pitch, with eyes shut, head down). So shutting down language and paralanguage and handing over to somasis is clearly a strategy for punctuating longer waves of discourse. It is at these points that the vlogger cuts from one filmic segment to the next (as she thinks of something more to say).

Blogger Comments:

This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): The Semovergent Paralanguage Of PERIODICITY.

[1] As previously explained here, in this instance, the authors mistook a (misanalysed) sequence of tones (language) as voice quality (paralanguage).  On Cléirigh's original model, any gestures consistent with the tone choices are instances of linguistic body language ("sonovergent" paralanguage), not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent" paralanguage), the concern of the present discussion.

[2] Here again, as above, the authors mistake a tone choice for paralanguage, and mistake the "sonovergent" gestures that are "in tune" with the pitch movement as "semovergent".

[3] The unarguable claim here is that ending discourse ('shutting down language and paralanguage and handing over to somasis') is one way ('strategy') of ending discourse ('punctuating longer waves of discourse').

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More to the point, the authors are here claiming to present paralinguistic examples of "longer waves of discourse".  In Martin & Rose (2007: 187-218), these are modelled in terms of:

• macro-Theme (introductory paragraph),
• hyper-Theme (topic sentence),
• hyper-New (paragraph summary), and
• macro-New (text summary).

To be clear, the authors have not identified any of the above in the text, and have not identified any semovergent paralanguage "in sync" with them.  Instead, the authors have merely mistaken intonation as paralanguage, and interpreted the unmarked tone for declaratives, tone 1 (and accompanying gestures) as "punctuating" a longer (unnamed) wave of discourse, while ignoring all the other instances of tone 1 (and accompanying gestures) at "non-punctuating" points in the discourse.

Again, the authors have tried to fit the data to their theory, instead of using theory to account for data.