A Meticulous Review Of Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith and Zappavigna (2022)
26 June 2024
25 June 2024
Questioning The Notion Of Protolinguistic Body Language
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 60):
This model usefully distinguishes paralinguistic behaviour that can only accompany speech (being closely tied to the interpersonal and textual systems of spoken language) from all the rest. This is our category of sonovergent paralanguage, where paralinguistic expression moves with speech prosodies. The remaining paralinguistic behaviour is divided in Table 2.4 between protolinguistic and semovergent categories, both of which may (but need not) accompany speech. The question, then, is whether it is helpful to separate out some of this expressive behaviour as protolinguistic – which would be to suggest that the adult semiotic communicative system simultaneously deploys language and (paralinguistic) protolanguage.
Exclamations are the limiting case of an exchange; they are verbal gestures of the speaker addressed to no one in particular, although they may, of course, call for empathy on the part of the addressee. Some of them are in fact not language but protolanguage, such as Wow!, Yuck!, Aha! and Ouch!.
Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 425):
Interjections are certainly quite different from adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions; they tend to be protolinguistic remnants in adult languages.
23 June 2024
The Fundamental Misunderstanding Behind The Terms 'Sonovergent' And 'Semovergent'
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 60):
See Table 2.4, based on Martin et al. (2013b), where the terms ‘sonovergent’ and ‘semovergent’ replace the terms ‘linguistic and ‘epilinguistic’ used in the original.
21 June 2024
Misrepresenting The Grounds For Protolinguistic Body Language
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 59-60):
Although the term ‘protolanguage’ in SFL theory referred in origin to a phase in linguistic ontogenesis, Martin et al. (2013b) and Zappavigna and Martin (2018) have suggested that for the adult communicative system, one of three proposed categories of paralanguage can be interpreted as ‘protolinguistic’ in nature. This is on the grounds that, like the infant meaning system, but unlike the other two categories they propose, it is organised in terms of microfunctions rather than metafunctions.
When our primary semiotic evolved into a higher-order semiotic (that is, when protolanguage evolved into language) …
… in the evolution of language out of protolanguage …
[2] This is misleading, because 'protolinguistic' was Cléirigh's proposal, and for body language, not paralanguage.
[3] With regard to Cléirigh's proposal, this is very misleading indeed. The category of protolinguistic body language is not proposed on the grounds that it is microfunctionally organised. It is proposed on the basis that it is a bi-stratal social semiotic system that is evolutionarily and developmentally prior to language (and as such, also to be found in other social semiotic species). The microfunctions are the SFL way of modelling paralanguage, not criterial for the category. That is, the microfunctions are a result of the categorisation, not the reason for it.
19 June 2024
The Disadvantage Of Modelling Protolanguage From The Perspective Of Affect
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 54):
While modelling protolanguage from the perspective of affect does not lend itself as readily to tracking the development of the system as protodialogue (involving calls, greetings, offers, refusals, acknowledgements, playful exchanges) and imaginative play, it has the advantage of emphasising the continuity with the earlier, emotion-charged forms of social communion and of allowing for a clearer focus on the origins of the verbal ATTITUDE system in the adult semantics of APPRAISAL (Martin and White, 2005).
Blogger Comments:
… a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" … . A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".
In terms of children’s early language development, the interpersonal metafunction provides the prototype of how meanings come to be grammaticalised. The two systems that were first grammaticalised by one small child (Nigel, aged 0;10) were:
POLARITY: positive / negative
MODALITY: VALUE: low / high
followed shortly by the two forms of “appreciation” in conjunction with the feature “positive”:
APPRECIATION (positive): impact (“that’s interesting”) / quality (“that tastes nice”)
Note that these were not yet mother tongue; they were protolanguage, realised by sounds and gestures. But they were systemic, or at least proto-systemic; and they provided the model for the linguistic systems of appraisal, where each lexical item realises the intersection of an appraisal feature with polarity and/or modality.
17 June 2024
The Problem With Reinterpreting Early Protolanguage As A System Of "Semioticised Affect"
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 52-3):
Despite the strongly emotional nature of earlier protoconversation, in this [Halliday's] interpretation, symbolic expressions of feeling are seen as restricted to the personal microfunction, where the child uses symbols to construe a sense of self in contradistinction to the environment. However, it could be argued that emotional states underlie each of the four initial microfunctions as shown in Table 2.3.
This makes room for an alternative interpretation of the early protolanguage as a system of semioticised affect, as argued in Painter (2003). Figure 2.2 presents a representation of Hal’s protolanguage at ten-and-a-half months in these terms. …
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, the reason why the expression of 'affective and cognitive states' are restricted to the personal microfunction in Halliday's model (e.g. Halliday 2004 [1998]: 18), is that these are expressions of personal states, not expressions of regulatory, instrumental or interactional states.
[2] To be clear, it is not a question of whether emotional states underlie the microfunctions, but of whether they constitute the content that is expressed in each case. After all, 'it could be argued that' emotional states underlie absolutely everything that humans participate in, both semiotic and material.
[3] To be clear, as the authors admit, this alternative interpretation is a model of emotional states that underlie protolanguage, not of protolanguage itself. That is, it is a model of the inner experience of the meaner, "proto-sensing", not a model of the symbolic processing of the meaner's protolanguage, "proto-saying".
[4] To be clear, the use of the word 'affect' here foreshadows the upcoming confusion of 'emotion', in its experiential sense of sensing, with 'affect' in its interpersonal sense of appraising.
∞
Significantly, the authors' interpretation of emotional expression as protolinguistic directly contradicts the overall argument of this chapter, which is to argue against the theoretical utility of including a protolinguistic category in their model of paralanguage.
15 June 2024
Misrepresenting The Proposal Put Forward By Cléirigh (2010)
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 50):
This section will outline the nature of the protolanguage system from the descriptions in the case studies by Halliday (1975), Painter ([1984] 2015) and Torr (1997). This will provide a basis for a later discussion of the proposal put forward by Cléirigh (2010) and found in Martin et al. (2013b) and Zappavigna and Martin (2018) that some aspects of adult paralanguage remain protolinguistic in nature.
Blogger Comments:
On the one hand, it is revealing that Cléirigh is only properly acknowledged when there is to be critique. On the other hand, this is misleading because Cléirigh's proposal is not about paralanguage, but about body language, which may or may not serve as paralanguage, and also applies to species without language, in which case it cannot serve as paralanguage
13 June 2024
Somasis: Confusing Biological And Social Orders Of Complexity
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 47-8):
By two or three months of age, then, the infant’s expressive but pre-symbolic behaviour can be modelled, as shown in Figure 2.1, as either ‘biological behaviour’ or ‘social communion’. The former may have meaning for the adult but is unaddressed, while the latter involves shared address but no content. Both are regarded here as examples of ‘somasis’, that is, human vocal and bodily behaviour that is not being deployed for meaning-making.
Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and physical. …
A biological system is a physical system with the added component of "life"; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".
11 June 2024
The Model Of Paralanguage In Martin et al. (2013b) And Zappavigna And Martin (2018)
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 45):
This chapter elaborates in greater detail the ontogenetic perspective underlying the accounts of paralanguage provided by Matthiessen (2009) and Cléirigh (2010) – the latter informing Martin et al. (2013b) and Zappavigna and Martin (2018) – which have influenced our model. …
Following this account, Section 2.6 presents a case for our current adaptation of the model of adult paralanguage found in Martin et al. (2013b) and Zappavigna and Martin (2018) by expanding the semovergent category of adult communication to include aspects previously regarded as ‘protolinguistic body language’.
Blogger Comments:
[1] On the one hand, this is misleading, because Cléirigh (2010) is a model of body language in which one type, linguistic, is language, not paralanguage, and the other two types, protolinguistic and epilinguistic, can function in the absence of language.
09 June 2024
The Inspiration For Zappavigna & Martin’s Model Of Paralanguage
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 43-4):
The remainder of this book proceeds as follows: In Chapter 2 we review the SFL ontogenesis research that inspired Zappavigna and Martin’s (2018) model of paralanguage and consider its implications for the revision of terminology and some of that model’s parameters here. In Chapter 3 we introduce the SFL description of English rhythm and intonation, which paralanguage converges with in spoken interaction. We then explore paralanguage from an ideational perspective in Chapter 4, from an interpersonal perspective in Chapter 5 and from a textual perspective in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 concludes the book with a discussion of intermodality, including consideration of mime, emblems and the place of paralanguage in a functional model of language and semiosis.
Blogger Comments:
[1] Here the authors misrepresent Cléirigh's model (2010) as the work of Zappavigna and Martin (2018), which satisfies the definition of plagiarism. The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.
[2] To be clear, Cléirigh's model of body language was not inspired by SFL ontogenesis research. Instead, it simply differentiated gestures and postures according to whether they were protolinguistic, linguistic or epilinguistic. Protolinguistic systems do not require the prior evolution or development of language, whereas epilinguistic systems do. This is a taxonomy based on types of semiotic systems, not on any actual research on ontogenesis.
07 June 2024
Emblems As Language Expressions
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 42-3):
The relationship we are emphasising between emblems and alternative expression form systems is outlined in Figure 1.10, using the words zero, one, two, three, four and five as examples. These words can be alternatively expressed in English through segmental phonology (e.g. /tuw/), graphological characters (e.g. ‘2’) or hand gestures (e.g. index and middle finger vertical).
An outline of the place of emblems in our overall system is presented in Figure 1.11. Rather than treating them as a dimension of paralanguage, we treat them as part of language proper – as an alternative manifestation of its own expression form.
Blogger Comments:
The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much,
As intelligent Mr. Toad!
05 June 2024
The Argument That 'Emblems' Are Part Of Language
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 42):
These gestures differ from the semovergent ones illustrated thus far in critical ways (cf. McNeill, 2012: 7–10). For one thing they commit very specific meanings and can be readily recognised without accompanying co-text (linguistic or paralinguistic). As part of this specificity they can enact moves in exchange structure on their own, for example, statements and requests, alongside greetings and leave-takings (hand waving), calls (beckoning gestures), agreement (nodding head), disagreement (shaking head), challenges (upright palm facing forward for ‘stop’) and so on. For another they are the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions gesture. And in this regard they are often commented on as culturally specific (e.g. the difference between an Anglo supine hand beckoning gesture and its Filipino prone hand equivalent). In both respects emblems contrast with common-sense dismissals of the paralanguage as idiosyncratic (although none of us has any trouble successfully interpreting another speaker’s sonovergent and semovergent systems). From the perspective of the sign languages of the deaf, emblems most strongly resemble signs; they are expression form gestures explicitly encoding meaning. Similarly, from the perspective of character-based writing systems (such as those of Chinese), emblems most strongly resemble characters (but gestured rather than scribed).
This indicates that from an SFL perspective emblems are better treated as part of language than as a dimension of paralanguage.
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): The Argument That 'Emblems' Are Part Of Language.
[2] To be clear, in SFL theory, unknown to the authors, the conventionalisation of the meaning of specific gestures in a community corresponds to the move of the sign (content/expression pair) from the instance pole to the system pole of the cline of instantiation. However, since this can occur in the development of semiotic systems in general — e.g. protolanguage, emoji, pictorial signage — it does not support the authors' argument that emblems are part of language.
[4] To be clear, here the authors have switched attention from tone groups to exchange structures in an attempt to fudge their argument. In their own terms, these moves would constitute examples of interpersonal semovergent paralanguage, since the meaning of these gestures "resonates" or "converges" with the meanings of Martin's interpersonal discourse semantic system of NEGOTIATION. Accordingly, this does not support the authors' argument that emblems are part of language.
[5] The authors' "argument" here is that because these gestures are regarded as prototypical gestures, they are therefore part of language.
[6] To be clear, on the one hand, some emblems are culturally-specific and some are not. So culture specificity cannot be used as an argument about emblems as a type. On the other hand, in any case, the culture-specificity of semiotic systems is not confined to language, as demonstrated, for example, by differences in the protolanguages of separated populations of the same species.
[7] To be clear, Halliday (1989: 30-1) distinguishes paralanguage from indexical features, the latter being those that are peculiar to the individual ("idiosyncratic"). So the authors' argument here is that emblems are language because they are not indexical features.
[8] As this blog demonstrates, the authors do have trouble in interpreting both the meaning of the vlogger gestures and the type of body language involved.
[9] To be clear, the authors' argument here is that emblems are part of language because their expressions resemble the expressions of language (Sign and Chinese), and that, in the case of one of these, at least, the expressions "explicitly encode" meaning.
On the one hand, if this is true, it applies to all languages, not just Sign and Chinese. On the other hand, the reason it is not true is that the expressions of Sign and Chinese, encode the wording that encodes meaning, whereas the expressions of emblems only encode meaning. That is, Sign and Chinese, being languages, are tri-stratal, whereas emblems, not being language, are bi-stratal. Once again, the authors' argument does not support their claim that emblems are part of language.
[10] As the above clarifications demonstrate, not one of the arguments offered by the authors supports their hypothesis that emblems are part of language.
03 June 2024
Emblems
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 41-2):
We conclude with a comment on what Kendon (2004) refers to as emblems, drawing on Ekman and Friesen (1969). Included here are gestures such as thumbs-up or thumbs-down (as praise or censure, respectively), index finger touching lips (for ‘quiet please’), hand cupped over ear (for ‘I can’t hear’), middle finger vertical (for ‘get fucked’) and so on. Our vlogger uses one of these gestures to introduce the first of her explanations as to why her hair is darker than usual – raising her index finger as an emblem for the numeral ‘1’.
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Emblems.
01 June 2024
Semovergence Implies Sonovergence
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 41):
As we will illustrate in the chapters which follow, it is probably safe to claim that whenever semovergent paralanguage is deployed, it will be coordinated with tonality, tonicity and rhythm; this is equivalent to arguing that semovergence implies sonovergence. Sonovergent paralanguage on the other hand can be deployed without semovergence, through gestures in tune with or in sync with prosodic phonology (but no more).
Blogger Comments:
Apart from the initial clause, this is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): The Notion That Semovergence Implies Sonovergence.
We will in fact suggest that SFL’s tone group, analysed for rhythm and tone, provides an essential unit of analysis for work on paralanguage as far as questions of synchronicity across modalities are concerned.