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. …

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[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.

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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.