Misrepresenting Protolinguistic Paralanguage As Evidence Against The Category [1]

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 61):

To explore this, some examples of adult paralinguistic behaviour classified by Zappavigna and Martin (2018) as protolinguistic will be briefly discussed. One group comprises various facial expressions such as smiling, raising, lowering or widening the eyes, opening the mouth and the presence or absence of eye contact with the addressee, all features of ‘social communion’ that predate even protolanguage (see Figure 2.1).  

As has been discussed, during the transition phase there is evidence that facial affect can be separated from other strands of interpersonal expression (e.g. looking happy while saying oh dear) and in the adult semiotic system affective facial expressions can clearly combine freely with any ideational meaning. In these respects, such expression forms are unlike protolinguistic signs, and the issue to be resolved in a particular case is whether that instance is somatic or semiotic.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the authors (Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna) are not here arguing with themselves (Zappavigna and Martin); they are arguing to exclude protolinguistic body language from Cléirigh's model which they have claimed as their own. The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.

[2] To be clear, the use of the terms 'behaviour' and 'expression(s)' here betray the authors' misunderstanding of body language as an expression-only semiotic system.

[3] To be clear, this misunderstanding arises from again giving priority to the view 'from below', facial expression, instead of the view 'from above', meaning. The meanings of facial expressions cannot predate protolanguage, since protolanguage is the initial semiotic system. Before protolanguage, such facial expressions have a social function only: the selection of value in the other, not a semiotic function: the expression of symbolic value for the other.

[4] Here the authors provide evidence against their own argument. To be clear, a child looking happy while saying oh dear, and an adult combining facial expressions with language are both instances of the paralinguistic use of protolinguistic body language. They are paralinguistic because they are used alongside language, and they are protolinguistic because they are semiotic systems that do require the prior evolution and development of language.

[5] This is misleading. The difference here is only that, in these instances, the protolinguistic signs are being used paralinguistically, rather than pre-linguistically.

[6] To be clear, the issue to be resolved in a particular case is whether the instance is social (carries value) or protolinguistic (carries symbolic value). As previously explained, the authors' category of 'somatic' confuses two distinct orders of complexity: the biological and the social.