Confusing Endophoric Reference With Information Focus

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 172):

Opposing features of [home] and [away] are illustrated in the two images in (8).

In the first image, synchronous with today, the lecturer’s pinched left thumb and index finger configures a vector pointing down in front of the lecturer’s body, in an expression of [home]. 

In the second image, synchronous with future, the right hand and forearm extend from the body pointing to a location to the right, expressing [away]. 

The second image additionally shows the left index finger pointing outwards from the body and slightly to the speaker’s left. The completion of this point synchronises with the completion of that to the right. The simultaneity of the two points delineates a space between present and future – a critical issue with respect to questions of fact or opinion.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the timing of the gesture is linguistic and textual, because, like the tonic, it realises the focus of New information, in this case: today and future.

[2] To be clear, this is another example of using body language to make endophoric reference.  In this instance, the left-right dimension represents the past-future dimension of interpersonal time (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 332), and the pointing gesture signals that the meanings 'present' and 'future' are recoverable from those construals by body language. Again, the vector is "resolved" and so the "deixis" is not virtual.

[3] To be clear, the timing of gestures does not have a referential function, because the timing does not point to a referent that can recover the identity of the timing. The timing may have demarcative function ('completion'), but demarcation is not reference.

Moreover, 'same time' does not delineate the time interval between 'present' and 'future', if only because 'same time' can be located in the present, in the future, and at every location in between.