Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 164, 165):
Fundamental to the expression of identification is the formation of a vector that indicates some direction for an observer’s eye to follow. … A further point of discussion relates to the directionality of embodied vectors, in particular the contrast between pointing to something present in the physical environment or something not present (e.g. Kendon, 2004: 200).
Observations of pointing in storytelling (e.g. Gullberg, 1998; Haviland, 2000) note that when characters (entities) or events (occurrences) are construed in a particular position in the gesturing space they may later be identified by pointing to that space.
This strategy is also widely recognised in sign language literature. Johnston (1989: 145), for example, notes how signers ‘place imaginary persons or objects into the “scene of action” ’. Once established they may be ‘referred to as if they were actually in the assigned locations’. While no instances of this kind were identified in our data, we concur with Johnston’s interpretation.
Where a paralinguistic entity or occurrence is first depicted in a space and that space is later pointed to, this is taken as an instance of identifying actual (as if present) phenomena.
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To be clear, the basic distinction in reference is between exophora and endophora. Applied to paralanguage (epilinguistic body language), this is the distinction between reference to the environment of paralanguage and reference to within paralanguage, respectively.
As will be seen, most body language reference is exophoric: pointing to something present in the environment of body language. But body language reference is endophoric: anaphoric when it refers back to a meaning previously ideationally construed in body language, as in the storytelling case above (Sign is language, not paralanguage).
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