Problems With The System Of Paralinguistic Power

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 150-1):

Social relations of relative POWER in images relate to the vertical angle of viewing in Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). In Painter et al. (2013) it relates to the vertical positioning of one character’s body in relation to another. In van Leeuwen (1999), POWER is also discussed as an aspect of interpersonal meaning afforded by the voice; the higher in pitch and the louder the voice is, the more dominant the speaker. The system of PARALINGUISTIC POWER in Figure 5.17 opposes features of equal and unequal on a cline and realised through the vertical positioning of bodies in relation to each other. The features of relative pitch and loudness are not identified as realisations in Figure 5.17.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the claim here is that the loud, high-pitched cry of a depicted child is dominant, whereas the soft, low pitch of the depicted child's adult male teacher is subordinated. This is also indirectly at odds with the fact that female newsreaders are trained to lower the pitch of their voice in presenting authoritative stories of events.

[2] To be clear, the claim here is that a depicted head of a tall person is dominant, whereas a depicted head of a short person is subordinated, and a depicted teacher and student of the same height are equal in power.

[3] On the contrary.

[4] Like previous systems in this chapter, the system in Figure 5.17 models paralanguage as a bi-stratal semiotic system, and although this is consistent with the notion of a semiotic system, it is inconsistent with the preceding chapters in which paralanguage is misunderstood as an expression-only semiotic system. Where in previous chapters it was just paralinguistic expression that was semovergent with language, in this chapter it is both paralinguistic content and expression that is semovergent with language.