Some Problems With Paralinguistic Hyper-New

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 193-4):

The hyper-New in (26) is preceded by two silent beats and begins with the internal causal connector so. The news of preceding tone groups (i.e. that most of the glucose, vitamins and amino acids and lots of water are back in the bloodstream) is distilled by declaring that by now we have a dilute material with not a lot of good stuff in it.

Prior to the commencement of the hyper-New the lecturer has completed a full circuit of the lecturing space, arriving at the left edge of the central desk (as depicted in Figure 6.8). 

He sustains this central position, moving behind the desk and around its right edge as he delivers the hyper-New. Note that this is the same central position from which he launched the macro-Theme. 

In effect what the body movement does here is more than culminate what has been presented. It affirms the authority of the lecturer’s declaration by positioning him at the ‘control centre’ of the meanings in play (e.g. Lim et al., 2012).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'hyper-New' is Martin's rebranding of the 'Paragraph Summary' of writing pedagogy as linguistic theory. As linguistic theory, hyper-New, like hyper-Theme and macro-Theme, is a function without a structure: there is no 'hyper-Given'.

[2] To be clear, here the authors are merely describing how the lecturer moves while delivering this part of his lecture. Any final position of the lecturer is simply his location when he ceases talking. Merely occupying a space does not highlight what is being said. And what is last said need not be a "hyper-New". That is, no realisation relation has been established between "hyper-New" and body location: a body location does not specify a "hyper-New" and a "hyper-New" does not specify a body location.

[3] Note, then, that this location of the lecturer makes no distinction between hyper-New from macro-Theme.

[4] In effect, by this reasoning, the lecturer undermines his authority when he is not at his desk, as when he expresses his "hyper-Theme" and "macro-Theme".