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.