Misrepresenting Protolinguistic Paralanguage As Evidence Against The Category [2]

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 62):

Another group of behaviours from Zappavigna and Martin’s (2018) ‘body protolanguage’ category involves relative uprightness of body posture, frontal or oblique facial and body orientation and the leaning forward or backwards of the torso in relation to the addressee. These expressive movements of the body are similarly independent from any ideational meanings with which they may combine and, similarly to facial movements, may also combine with other interpersonal strands of meaning, whether linguistic (e.g. a variety of spoken mood forms) or paralinguistic (e.g. smiling or widening the eyes). There is thus neither fusion of ideational/interpersonal meaning in relation to ‘content’ nor multimodal fusion in the form of expression. The characteristics of protolanguage as a developmental semiotic are not therefore in evidence.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the use of the terms 'behaviours' and 'expressive/facial movements' here again betray the authors' misunderstanding of body language as an expression-only semiotic system.

[2] Again, 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.

[3] To be clear, these postures and orientations also occur in other social semiotic species, such as rainbow lorikeets. When they are meaningful, they are protolinguistic on the basis that they do not require the evolutionary or developmental emergence of language.

[4] To be clear, on Cléirigh's model, these are simply examples of protolinguistic body language accompanying the ideational or interpersonal meanings of language; that is, of protolinguistic body language being used paralinguistically. 

The authors' confusion here derives from their misunderstanding that such body language expressions realise the metafunctional meanings of the linguistic instance rather than the microfunctional meanings of the protolinguistic instance. This misunderstanding, in turn, derives from the authors' notion of convergence, in which paralanguage expression is said to converge with language content. This misunderstanding, in turn, derives from the authors' misunderstanding of body language as an expression-only semiotic system — a misunderstanding that invalidates their model of paralanguage.

[5] To be clear, on the one hand, the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions are irrelevant to a characterisation of protolanguage, since they do not evolve or develop until the emergence of language. The microfunctions are predecessors of the metafunctions, not a fusion of them. On the other hand, as Halliday's previously cited data (Halliday 2004 [1975]: 36) demonstrate, multimodality is not a necessary condition of protolanguage.

[6] To be clear, the characteristics of protolanguage as a developmental semiotic are merely characteristics of protolanguage in relation to the ontogenesis of language. Protolinguistic body language is concerned with protolanguage in its own right, not as a means to a linguistic end.