Combined Face And Body Commitment Of Affect

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 35):

A good example of a combined face and body commitment of affect in the vlog we are drawing our examples from comes as the vlogger is complaining about being hassled for her parking spot before she is ready to leave. The relevant tone groups are presented here, and we will return to this example in our discussion of mime in Chapter 7 (for a complete phonological analysis of this phase of the vlog, see Appendix B6). At this point we are simply interested in the way the vlogger’s facial expression and arm position are used to express the hassler’s exasperation (79).

(76) //3 some / guy was
(77) //3 sitting there and there was
(78) //3 cars be- / hind him and he was like
(79) // [mimics man’s gesture and expression]
(80) //1 ^ like / waving me / out… //

Blogger Comments:

This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): An Epilinguistic Projection Of Protolinguistic Body Language.

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, the relation between expression ('face and body') and content ('affect') is realisation, not commitment.  'Commitment' is Martin's misunderstanding of instantiation, as previously explained here.

…

[3] To be clear, this expression of exasperation realises ATTITUDE, not because it expresses an emotion, but because the exasperation enacts an assessment (of the speaker by a motorist).

In terms of Cléirigh's original model, contrary to the authors' interpretation, the motorist's ATTITUDE is realised in protolinguistic body language, not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent" paralanguage).  The gesture is a manifestation of a conscious state that functions socio-semiotically.

The vlogger's mime of the motorist's body language, on the other hand, is an instance of epilinguistic body language in which she projects the motorist's protolinguistic body language that assesses her.

Semovergent Paralanguage And CONNEXION

 Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 33):

As noted earlier, ideationally semovergent paralanguage, as formulated in Chapter 4, does not involve resources for explicitly connecting gestures in terms of addition, comparison, temporality or causality and so does not converge with CONNEXION in spoken language.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses levels of abstraction. To be clear, it is not a matter of connecting gestures, but a matter of gestures (expression) realising logico-semantic relations between figures (content). 

[2] To be clear, any gesture that realises relators such as 'and', 'or', before', 'after' etc. serves this function, such as pointing left, right, forward, behind while saying the temporal relator.

A more interesting case is the logico-semantic relation that Martin's CONNEXION does not account for: projection. A speaker can mark a projection by imitating the indexical features of the Sayer of the projecting figure. Halliday (1989: 30-1):

Indexical features, by contrast [with paralinguistic features], are not part of the language at all, but simple properties of the individual speaker. It may help to tabulate these (see Table 3.1).

So, for example, a satirist who imitates the indexical features of say, Donald Trump, is indicating that his projection is to be understood as a projection of Donald Trump.

Appraisal: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 16):

In terms of grammatical metaphor APPRAISAL allows us to realise feelings as if they were things and deploy them accordingly.

(48) He was angry because she was sitting in her car. (congruent adjectival feeling)
(49) His anger prompted her departure. (metaphorical nominalised feeling)

Blogger Comments:

[1] As was the case for NEGOTIATION, it is not the interpersonal system of APPRAISAL that enables ("allows") grammatical metaphor. In any case, the grammatical metaphor here is ideational ("feelings as things"), not interpersonal.

[2] To be clear, adjectives, like nouns, are nominals. The reason this instance is congruent is that a semantic element, an emotive quality of projection (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 209-10), is realised grammatically as a nominal group serving as Attribute.

[3] To be clear, the reason this instance is metaphorical is that a semantic element, a process or quality of emotion, is realised grammatically by a noun serving as the Thing of a nominal group. This ideational metaphor, therefore, is not enabled by the interpersonal system of APPRAISAL.

Connexion: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 14):

In terms of grammatical metaphor CONNEXION allows us to formalise relations between figures realised congruently between clauses or metaphorically as single clauses:

(30) (congruent clause complex construing a causal sequence)

Because he was harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(31) (metaphorical cause in the clause)

His harassment led to her departure.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the disadvantage of using Martin's CONNEXION instead of Halliday & Matthiessen's ideational semantics in modelling grammatical metaphor is that Martin's CONNEXION can only account for metaphor involving expansion relations that are additive, comparative, temporal or causal — and these without regard for the more general categories of elaboration, extension and enhancement — and cannot account for grammatical metaphor involving projection, such as the following example, which moves from the congruent to the increasingly metaphorical (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 711):

(a) Most linguists today believe → that there is no good evidence ...
(b) the strongest belief of all is [[ that there is no trace ... ]]
(c) these firmly entrenched – and vigorously defended – beliefs

Connexion: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13-4):

CONNEXION comprises resources for relating discourse semantic figures (both occurrence figures and state figures) to one another in sequences (via additive, comparative, temporal and causal relations). In terms of lexicogrammatical diversification it allows us to connect figures to one another in a variety of ways:

(26) Due to him harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(27) Because he was harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(28) He harassed her, so she left the parking lot.

(29) He harassed her. Consequently she left the parking lot.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the use of the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) makes the use of Martin's CONNEXION redundant, since the former subsumes the latter by relating figures in sequences.

[2] To be clear, the reason why Martin's CONNEXION is only concerned with these particular expansion relations is because that was the state of development of Halliday's model of textual cohesive conjunction in Halliday & Hasan (1976) which Martin rebranded in Martin (1992) as his own model of logical discourse semantics. There is no projection in Martin's model of logical discourse semantics because projection is not used cohesively.

[3] To be clear, in (26) the first figure is realised metaphorically as a prepositional phrase. In (27) and (28), two figures are realised congruently as clause complexes, each clause structurally related through hypotaxis (27) or parataxis (28). In (29), the two figures are realised by two clauses that are not structurally related, but instead related textually through cohesive conjunction.

Ideation: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13, 232):

In terms of diversification IDEATION allows us, for example, to position¹⁵ figures lexicogrammatically through a range of clause types (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999; Hao, 2015, 2020a,b):

(20) (behavioural clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

‘It will be kind of fun’, she smiled.

(21) (mental clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

She thought it would be kind of fun.

(22) (relational clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

She was sure it would be kind of fun.

 

¹⁵ For Hao (2020) a positioned figure is one that is in some sense attributed to a particular source.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, by 'diversification', the authors mean 'diversification of grammatical systems realising discourse semantic ones' (p12).

[2] To be clear, 'positioned' figure is Hao's rebranding of Halliday & Matthiessen's 'projected' figure. (Hao was Martin's student and has adopted his modus operandi.)

[3] To be clear, this confuses a projecting clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection. The projecting clause does not realise the projection ('positioning') of a figure of being, it realises the figure that projects the figure of being. Note also: Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 302):

Note, finally, that while ‘behavioural’ clauses do not ‘project’ indirect speech or thought, they often appear in fictional narrative introducing direct speech, as a means of attaching a behavioural feature to the verbal process of ‘saying’.

[4] Again, this confuses a projecting clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection. The projecting mental clause does not realise the projection ('positioning') of a figure of being, it realises the sensing figure that projects the figure of being.

[5] To be clear, this confuses an embedded fact clause with a ranking projected clause. Importantly, being embedded, the fact clause is not projected ("positioned") by the Process of the clause in which it is embedded.

And this misunderstanding is then compounded by confusing what is mistaken to be a projecting relational clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection, as in the two previous examples.