Social Bonding Through Reciprocated Expressions Of Emotion

 Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 140-1): 

When such couplings are tendered in interaction with others and reciprocated they are said to constitute bonds, and it is through the sharing of multiple bonds that we build affiliating communities (Knight, 2013; Zappavigna, 2018, 2019).  Here we are concerned with how selected features of FACIAL AFFECT and VOICE AFFECT couple with their ideational triggers in the negotiation of bonds in the service of affiliation. Figure 5.11 presents options and realisations in a system of BONDING adapted from Zappavigna (2018, 2019) with realisations for PARALINGUISTIC AFFECT.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the claim here is simply that reciprocated evaluations bond interlocutors socially.

[2] To be clear, the claim here is that reciprocated emotional evaluations, expressed by the face and voice, bond people socially.

The problem here is that facial and vocal expressions of emotion are not systems of the interpersonal metafunction of language, but are systems of pre-metafunctional protolanguage, as demonstrated by all the members of other socio-semiotic species whose facial and vocal configurations express emotion.

Given this, the claim is that reciprocated emotional responses to the same environmental stimulus bond people socially. One example of this would be when two strangers, both afraid of being eaten by same approaching crocodile, are bonded socially through their reciprocated facial expressions.

Problems With The Notion Of "Coupling" An Evaluative Meaning With An Ideational Trigger

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 140):

From a systemic functional perspective the co-instantiation of an evaluative meaning with an ideational one constitutes a kind of ‘coupling’, one that can be applied to expressions of AFFECT with accompanying ideational triggers. 

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday (2008: 179) characterises the APPRAISAL system of ATTITUDE as follows:

This is a grammatical system that is realised by a selection of lexical items.

That is, AFFECT is realised by lexical item, and the "coupling" is with some wording of its co-text, both of which function both interpersonally and ideationally, at least.

[2] To be clear, 'ideational trigger' is the textual/interpersonal/ideational wording that is "coupled" with the lexical item that expresses the attitude. Since a 'trigger' is a cause of a process, the term only applies in the case of impinging mental clauses (Adele pleases her) where the Phenomenon is the Agent. In emanating mental clauses (She likes Adele), the Phenomenon is not the Agent ('trigger') but the Range that 'delimits the boundaries of the sensing' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 347).