The Authors' General Model Of Sonovergent And Semovergent Systems

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 211):

Our expectation is that each new register will lead to reconsideration of the details of the specific paralinguistic systems proposed in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. We do hope on the other hand that our general model of sonovergent and semovergent systems will stand a longer test of time and prove a productive framework for exploring the contribution of gesture, body orientation, position and movement, facial expression, gaze and voice quality to face-to-face interaction. … As functional linguists, we have been sidelining paralanguage for far too long.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the authors' distinction between sonovergent and semovergent paralanguage is their rebranding of Cléirigh's distinction between linguistic and epilinguistic body language. As explained throughout, the authors' sonovergent paralanguage is language, not paralanguage. And as demonstrated throughout, the authors include protolinguistic body language in their semovergent paralanguage, despite the fact that this is a rebranding of body language that is only made possible by the prior evolution and development of language. Either of these misunderstandings, alone, invalidates the authors' model.

[2] Here again Martin justifies his work as the righting of a wrong. Cf. Martin & Doran (2023: 44):

Structure markers make important contributions to the realisation of systemic options in many languages… . Our goal here has been to suggest a way forward for grammarians disposed towards granting these structural orphans a home.

The Emergence Of The Authors' Work On Paralanguage

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 210):

It might seem anticlimactic to end on a note of caution. But our work on paralanguage from an SFL perspective is still embryonic, especially with respect to the range of registers we have considered. As noted in Chapter 1, our work emerged in studies of New South Wales Youth Justice Conferencing (Zappavigna and Martin, 2018) – and so involved fairly formal interactions between younger offenders, support persons, police officers, youth workers and a convenor.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the model of paralanguage that emerged in studies of New South Wales Youth Justice Conferencing in 2009 was entirely the work of Cléirigh alone. Not one of these authors played any part whatsoever in even contributing to that model. The plagiarism throughout this work has been effected through myriad small steps.

Drawing, Music And Dance As Creolised Paralanguage And The Authors' Model Of Intermodality

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 210):

In the interest of balance, one might up the ante here. How many modalities other than language can be conceived as creolised paralanguage? Is paralanguage drawing in the air or turning this around – is drawing or painting actually inscribed ideational paralanguage? Would analysis of concert conducting be a useful stepping stone for imagining music as creolised interpersonal and textual paralanguage? Is dance creolised paralanguage along similar lines? 

As flagged in Section 7.2, in an era when presentations on multimodality so often ignore language (for fear of ‘logocentrism’) and regularly focus on one modality other than language rather than intermodality, these seem usefully challenging questions to pose.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, the hypothesis of 'creolised paralanguage' postulates that people who do not share a common paralanguage come together and create a simplified pidgin paralanguage, which then becomes the native paralanguage of a once paralinguistically diverse community.

[2] To be clear, the authors have just conceived language that is signed as creolised paralanguage, but not language that is spoken. Here they give the impression of not regarding Sign as language.

[3] Here the authors are taking credit for an observation made by Matthiessen fifteen years earlier, as quoted in the notes on Cléirigh's model that the authors are working from:

The kinological systems are analogous to the articulatory systems of phonology, though they realise meaning rather than wording, and include gestures that involve drawing in the air — ‘where drawing and gesturing merge’ (Matthiessen 2007: 8).

[4] To be clear, the notion of music as creolised paralanguage would postulate that people who do not share a common music come together and create a simplified pidgin music, which then becomes the native music of a once music-diverse community.

[5] To be clear, the notion of dance as creolised paralanguage would postulate that people who do not share a common dance come together and create a simplified pidgin dance, which then becomes the native dance of a once dance-diverse community.

[6] Here the authors are congratulating themselves for doing what others do not do: modelling intermodality, the relations between instances of different semiotic systems. However, it may be instructive to consider just how the authors' model it.

To be clear, the authors model intermodality in terms of convergence. All that means is that the two modes are similar or different, and the authors are not much interested in difference, which is where a rich range of types of relations potentially lies. That is, all the different terms they use for convergence:

• sonovergence
• semovergence
• concurrence
• resonance
• synchronicity

disguise the fact that they merely label the relation between modes as one of similarity. That's all.

[7] Responding to these challenging questions is perhaps more instructive than the questions are useful.

The Authors' Hypothesis That Sign Languages Emerged As Creolised Paralanguages

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 210):

Even more sensitive might be consideration of the genesis of sign languages around the world, and the possibility of a pidgin/creole continuum involving the range of speakers who had the opportunity to learn sign in childhood as a ‘native language’ and those who came to it at various stages later on in life as a first or additional language. How might such studies bear on the hypothesis that sign languages emerged as creolised paralanguages among communities of deaf speakers?

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Sign languages are language, with a content plane stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar. The ontogenesis of Sign is the ontogenesis of language.

A creolised paralanguage would be a pidgin paralanguage that has become a native paralanguage. A pidgin paralanguage would be a simplified paralanguage used by people who do not share a common paralanguage.

The authors' hypothesis here is that Sign languages emerge as the nativisation of a simplified accompaniment to language (paralanguage) in communities of deaf speakers who did not previously share a common accompaniment to language.

Deaf signers might be tempted to similarly hypothesise that spoken languages emerged as creolised vocal paralanguage among communities of hearing people. In this scenario, hearing signers, who did not previously have a shared vocalised accompaniment to Sign, created a simplified vocalised accompaniment, and when this paralanguage was learned by the next generation, it became spoken language.

Confusing Functional Syntagmatic Relations With Formal Constituency

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 209):

Working from a functional paradigm we of course have to approach the relation of ‘sign languages’ to one another differently. In essence this means adopting a paradigmatic perspective and formalising their meaning potential as far as possible in system networks specifying the relation of one sign (in Saussure’s sense of the term) to another. 

The crucial question we then need to ask is whether meanings combine with one another. …The paralinguistic systems we describe in this volume do combine ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings but apparently without involving syntagmatic relations (i.e. parts configuring as wholes).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the Saussurean sign includes both content ('signified') and expression ('signifier'), whereas system networks specify relations within one or the other, e.g. lexicogrammar or phonology. For some of Martin's misunderstandings of Saussure, see:

• Misunderstanding What Saussure Was "Struggling Against"
• Mistaking Saussure's Rejected Model For Saussure's 'Sign' [1]
• Mistaking Saussure's Rejected Model For Saussure's 'Sign' [2]
• Misunderstanding The Saussurean Sign
• The "Non-Privileging" Of Either Level Of Symbolic Abstraction
• Misunderstanding Saussure's Coins Example
• Misunderstanding The Bonding Of Signified And Signifier And The Relation Of Form To Substance
• Seriously Misunderstanding The Sign In Relation To Linguistics And Semiotics

[2] To be clear, this confuses structural relations along the syntagmatic axis (e.g. Pretonic ^ Tonic) with the part-whole relations of the rank scale (e.g. feet (parts) as constituents of a tone group (whole)).

The View Of Paralanguage As ‘Outside’ Language

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 208-9):

In order to explore this question we need to first ask why paralanguage came to be regarded as in some sense ‘outside’ language proper in the first place – a position which has been challenged by specialists such as Fricke (2013), who argue for a more unified approach to gesture and speech. To understand this we probably have to appreciate the privileged position of the phoneme in influential linguistic paradigms such as the American structuralism documented in Joos (1957). This work founds a phonemics, morphology and syntax approach to language description which continues to shape introductions to linguistics, at least in the English-speaking world and its compliant intellectual dominions. The approach is fundamentally a combinatorial one, with clauses (ultimately) composed of morphemes and morphemes composed of phonemes – all of which is presented as linguistic form, arbitrarily related to meaning. Since paralinguistic signs are not composed of phonemes (or arguably of comparable entities) and do make meaning, paralanguage gets positioned as something to be studied alongside language, not as part of it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL, Fricke (2013) provides no argument with regard to theorising in SFL, because she does not proceed from the same theoretical assumptions as SFL. That is, Fricke operates with a different conception of grammar, and a different conception what constitutes inclusion in a grammar, as the following quote (op. cit.: 734) makes clear:

[2] In contrast, Halliday (1989: 30) offers an  explanation in terms of SFL Theory:

[3]  To be clear, for Halliday (1989: 31), paralanguage is not part of the grammar, but is part of the linguistic system: