Social Bonding Through Reciprocated Expressions Of Emotion

 Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 140-1): 

When such couplings are tendered in interaction with others and reciprocated they are said to constitute bonds, and it is through the sharing of multiple bonds that we build affiliating communities (Knight, 2013; Zappavigna, 2018, 2019).  Here we are concerned with how selected features of FACIAL AFFECT and VOICE AFFECT couple with their ideational triggers in the negotiation of bonds in the service of affiliation. Figure 5.11 presents options and realisations in a system of BONDING adapted from Zappavigna (2018, 2019) with realisations for PARALINGUISTIC AFFECT.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the claim here is simply that reciprocated evaluations bond interlocutors socially.

[2] To be clear, the claim here is that reciprocated emotional evaluations, expressed by the face and voice, bond people socially.

The problem here is that facial and vocal expressions of emotion are not systems of the interpersonal metafunction of language, but are systems of pre-metafunctional protolanguage, as demonstrated by all the members of other socio-semiotic species whose facial and vocal configurations express emotion.

Given this, the claim is that reciprocated emotional responses to the same environmental stimulus bond people socially. One example of this would be when two strangers, both afraid of being eaten by same approaching crocodile, are bonded socially through their reciprocated facial expressions.