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:

This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): The Notion That Emblematic Gestures Are Linguistic Alternatives To Phonology And Graphology.

To be clear, Kendon's 'emblems', which he describes as 'quotable gestures', are conventionalised signs, such as 'thumbs-up', the 'V-sign', or the 'middle-finger salute'.  As signs, they are meaning/expression pairs, not tri-stratal language.

The authors, however, here present hand-shapes representing numbers as emblems and, on that basis, argue that the gestures involved are an alternative form of linguistic expression, along with phonology and graphology. An easy way to falsify this claim is to try to use emblematic gestures alone to express the following verse from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows:

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!