Why The Model Of Paralinguistic Deixis Is Theoretically Invalid

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 166):

Key PARALINGUISTIC DEIXIS options are outlined in Figure 6.2 and illustrated in the following sections.

As modelled in Figure 6.2, PARALINGUISTIC DEIXIS identifying an [actual] person, thing or place opens up a further choice of [self] or [other]. The feature [self] is realised through an embodied vector directed inwards towards to the speaker’s body and [other] through a vector directed outwards from the body.

 

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Figure 6.2 is not a system of DEIXIS, but a classification of referents in the environment of body language. Some of the referents are distinguished in terms of deixis (self vs other, 'home' vs 'away'), but most are not (actual vs virtual, semiosis vs location, retrospective vs prospective). These inconsistencies alone invalidate the authors' model of PARALINGUISTIC DEIXIS.

Moreover, the network presents referents as realised by the gestures that point to them (cf. referent 'dog' realised by reference item 'this'), and in four cases, referents are realised by the insertion (+) of a pointing gesture into some unacknowledged structure. And in one case, the feature 'virtual', the referent is realised by the structural insertion of a gesture that does not point to it (+ unresolved vector).

On the other hand, this network does model paralanguage as content and expression, so it is both content and expression that are convergent with the content of language (as in Chapter 5, but not in Chapter 4).