The Confusion That Invalidates The Authors' Model Of Paralinguistic Identification/Deixis

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 165):

In spoken language a primary distinction is made between the recoverability of entities from assumed shared knowledge (homophora) and from the immediately present situation (Figure 6.1). If the latter, then recovery is either from within the text (endophora) or from outside the text (exophora). In paralanguage on the other hand, options for the recoverability of entities in discourse primarily distinguish between the feature [actual] realised through a resolved vector that is directed to visibly or sensibly (as if) present phenomena, and the feature [virtual] realised through an unresolved vector – that is, one that cannot be situationally resolved.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misrepresents the source of this theorising, Halliday & Hasan (1976: 33):

That is, exophoric reference is situational, whereas endophoric reference is textual, as the prefixes make plain. By the same token, homophoric reference is self-specifying.

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue. As the preceding post explained, textual epilinguistic body language also distinguishes between endophoric and exophoric reference. The features 'actual' and 'virtual', on the other hand, are not types of reference, but classifications of referents. It will be seen that the authors' system of PARALINGUISTIC DEIXIS is organised on the basis of this confusion, which thereby invalidates their model.

[3] In mathematics, a vector is a quantity with both magnitude (length) and direction, and a resolved vector is one that has been broken down into smaller component vectors; so an unresolved vector is one that has not been broken down into smaller component vectors. For the authors, however, 'vector' just means the direction of the pointing gesture, and its resolution is the identification of what is indicated by the pointing gesture, the referent.

[4] To be clear, if the referent of a pointing gesture (vector) is not identifiable, then the pointing gesture does not serve a reference function.