Why The Authors' Argument Against Protolinguistic Body Language Is Invalid

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 63):

In sum, given that

there is no formal way to discriminate the proposed adult ‘protolinguistic’ body language from the semovergent category, 

no evidence that the proposed instances operate as protolinguistic signs and 

a common recognition that the meanings in question belong within the interpersonal domain, 

they are subsumed in this book within the semovergent category. Our position will be that

paralanguage, like verbal language, is organised metafunctionally and that

different metafunctional strands of both language and paralanguage can be instantiated simultaneously.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. Throughout this chapter, the authors have failed to grasp the basic criteria of Cléirigh's model. Protolinguistic body language is distinguished from epilinguistic body language ("semovergent paralanguage") in not requiring the prior evolutionary or developmental emergence of language, which means that, unlike epilinguistic body language, it is also to be observed in other socio-semiotic species.

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue. The evidence that they are signs is that these gestures and postures mean something other than themselves. That is, they are signifiers of signifieds, tokens of values, expressions of content. The evidence that are protolinguistic is that they do not require the prior evolutionary or developmental emergence of language, as demonstrated by their use in other species.

[3] This is misleading because it is untrue. As previously demonstated, this "common recognition" was by colleagues using the same approach, and was the study of pictures, not body language. Because pictures are an epilinguistic semiotic system, their meaning is organised metafunctionally, not microfunctionally, and these colleagues simply interpreted the meaning of the pictures in terms of the metafunctions.

[4] As demonstrated above, this is a serious category error, since it miscategorises a semiotic system that does not require the prior emergence of language as one that does. As such, invalidates the authors' model.

[5] To be clear, this position of the authors is invalid because only epilinguistic body language ("semovergent paralanguage") is both metafunctional and paralanguage. As previously demonstrated, protolinguistic body language is not metafunctional, and linguistic body language ("sonovergent paralanguage") is not paralanguage but language.

[6] To be clear, unknown to the authors, this is simply the paralinguistic use of epilinguistic body language in Cléirigh's model.