Misunderstanding Semiosis As Somasis

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 124):

Our focus is on the semiosis of facial expression realising emotion in human interaction, but it is important to note that the face can also manifest non-emotional (somatic) states. A frown, for example, might manifest concentrated thinking (Fasel and Luettin, 2003: 260) or physiological states of pain or fatigue (see Chapter 1). Instances of somatic facial expression can of course index purposeful feelings, which remains a challenge for analysts as discussed in Chapter 1. The approach taken in this book is that behaviours can be treated as paralinguistic (i.e. semiotic) depending on whether or not they are negotiated as meaningful in interaction.

Blogger Comments:

This is a very serious misunderstanding. If a facial configuration means ('manifests', indexes') something other than itself, then it is the signifier of a signified, and so semiotic, not "somatic". At the social level, in terms of Halliday's linear taxonomy of complex systems, some facial configurations select a positive value (e.g. 'approach') in the other, whereas some select a negative value (e.g. 'avoid').

Misrepresenting Protolinguistic Body Language As Either Somatic Or Interpersonal

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 62-3):

What is common to most of the meanings assigned by Zappavigna and Martin (2018) to ‘protolinguistic’ microfunctions is that, if not simply somatic, they are interpersonal in nature – but not accommodated by a linguistic model that includes only SPEECH FUNCTION, MOOD and MODALITY in that metafunction.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Again, the authors (Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna) are not here arguing with themselves (Zappavigna and Martin); they are arguing to exclude protolinguistic body language from Cléirigh's model which they have claimed as their own. The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.

[2] As previously explained, in Cléirigh's model, protolinguistic body language, by definition, excludes non-semiotic ("somatic") behaviour, and the authors' misunderstanding in this regard derives from taking the view 'from below' (body movement) instead of the view 'from above' (meaning). And, as also previously explained, in terms of orders of complexity, the authors' model of somasis confuses the biological order with the social order, and includes what Halliday (2004: 18) models as protolanguage.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. As explained in the previous post, this false claim derives from the authors misrepresenting epilinguistic pictorial systems, which do include interpersonal meaning, as protolinguistic body language, which does not.

[4] To be clear, a model of an evolutionarily prior system, protolinguistic body language, is not required to "accommodate" a model of an evolutionarily later system, a linguistic model, any more than a description of therapod dinosaurs must accommodate a description of the birds that evolved from them.

Misrepresenting Protolinguistic Paralanguage As Evidence Against The Category [1]

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 61):

To explore this, some examples of adult paralinguistic behaviour classified by Zappavigna and Martin (2018) as protolinguistic will be briefly discussed. One group comprises various facial expressions such as smiling, raising, lowering or widening the eyes, opening the mouth and the presence or absence of eye contact with the addressee, all features of ‘social communion’ that predate even protolanguage (see Figure 2.1).  

As has been discussed, during the transition phase there is evidence that facial affect can be separated from other strands of interpersonal expression (e.g. looking happy while saying oh dear) and in the adult semiotic system affective facial expressions can clearly combine freely with any ideational meaning. In these respects, such expression forms are unlike protolinguistic signs, and the issue to be resolved in a particular case is whether that instance is somatic or semiotic.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the authors (Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna) are not here arguing with themselves (Zappavigna and Martin); they are arguing to exclude protolinguistic body language from Cléirigh's model which they have claimed as their own. The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.

[2] To be clear, the use of the terms 'behaviour' and 'expression(s)' here betray the authors' misunderstanding of body language as an expression-only semiotic system.

[3] To be clear, this misunderstanding arises from again giving priority to the view 'from below', facial expression, instead of the view 'from above', meaning. The meanings of facial expressions cannot predate protolanguage, since protolanguage is the initial semiotic system. Before protolanguage, such facial expressions have a social function only: the selection of value in the other, not a semiotic function: the expression of symbolic value for the other.

[4] Here the authors provide evidence against their own argument. To be clear, a child looking happy while saying oh dear, and an adult combining facial expressions with language are both instances of the paralinguistic use of protolinguistic body language. They are paralinguistic because they are used alongside language, and they are protolinguistic because they are semiotic systems that do require the prior evolution and development of language.

[5] This is misleading. The difference here is only that, in these instances, the protolinguistic signs are being used paralinguistically, rather than pre-linguistically.

[6] To be clear, the issue to be resolved in a particular case is whether the instance is social (carries value) or protolinguistic (carries symbolic value). As previously explained, the authors' category of 'somatic' confuses two distinct orders of complexity: the biological and the social.

The Disadvantage Of Modelling Protolanguage From The Perspective Of Affect

 Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 54):

While modelling protolanguage from the perspective of affect does not lend itself as readily to tracking the development of the system as protodialogue (involving calls, greetings, offers, refusals, acknowledgements, playful exchanges) and imaginative play, it has the advantage of emphasising the continuity with the earlier, emotion-charged forms of social communion and of allowing for a clearer focus on the origins of the verbal ATTITUDE system in the adult semantics of APPRAISAL (Martin and White, 2005).

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, a model of protolanguage from the perspective of emotion ("affect") is a model of the sensing that might accompany protolanguage — like a model of sensing that might accompany language — not a model of the meaning that is actually expressed. As previously explained, it is not a question of whether protolanguage is "emotion-charged", but of whether it is emotions that constitute the content of what is expressed.

[2] To be clear, it is Halliday's linear taxonomy of complexity that provides a means of understanding the developmental move from pre-semiotic social communion to protolanguage. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

… a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" … . A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".

On Halliday's model, an infant's pre-symbolic behaviour of 'social communion' is social; it is biological with the added component of value. Again, the value, in this model, can be understood in terms of Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, which proposes that neural systems include inherited 'values', which bias the perceptual categorisation of experience toward categorisations that been naturally selected to be of adaptive value to the organism's ancestors.

In the case of the 'social communion' of a human infant, the infant's 'expression with no symbolic content' selects a perception of positive value in the neural system of an adult, thus biasing the behaviour of the adult towards the caregiving of the infant, and through that, the strengthening of a social structure: a social bond between infant and caregiver. It is when this value becomes symbolic value that the social system acquires the added component of meaning that makes it a semiotic system: protolanguage.

[3] To be clear, the 'clearer focus' that is allowed by modelling protolanguage from the perspective of emotion ("affect") is the important distinction between the protolanguage systems that are common to all social semiotic species and the language systems that are unique to humans.

Moreover, the ATTITUDE system of AFFECT is concerned with the interpersonal assessment by reference to emotion, not with emotion as experiential meaning. As Halliday (2008: 179-80) explains, as a system of interpersonal assessment, the system of ATTITUDE arises from the systemisation of POLARITY and MODALITY:

In terms of children’s early language development, the interpersonal metafunction provides the prototype of how meanings come to be grammaticalised. The two systems that were first grammaticalised by one small child (Nigel, aged 0;10) were:

POLARITY: positive / negative
MODALITY: VALUE: low / high

followed shortly by the two forms of “appreciation” in conjunction with the feature “positive”:

APPRECIATION (positive): impact (“that’s interesting”) / quality (“that tastes nice”)

Note that these were not yet mother tongue; they were protolanguage, realised by sounds and gestures. But they were systemic, or at least proto-systemic; and they provided the model for the linguistic systems of appraisal, where each lexical item realises the intersection of an appraisal feature with polarity and/or modality.

Somasis: Confusing Biological And Social Orders Of Complexity

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 47-8):

By two or three months of age, then, the infant’s expressive but pre-symbolic behaviour can be modelled, as shown in Figure 2.1, as either ‘biological behaviour’ or ‘social communion’. The former may have meaning for the adult but is unaddressed, while the latter involves shared address but no content. Both are regarded here as examples of ‘somasis’, that is, human vocal and bodily behaviour that is not being deployed for meaning-making.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, bodily behaviour that does not realise meaning is irrelevant to a model of semiotic systems. It has only become an issue here because the authors take the view 'from below', expression, in contradistinction to the SFL perspective 'from above', content.

[2] To be clear, classifying 'social' as 'biological' confuses different orders of complexity. On Halliday's model, which the authors have previously cited, but misunderstood, a social system is of a different order of complexity, because it is a biological system with the added component of value. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508, 509):

Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and physical. …

A biological system is a physical system with the added component of "life"; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".

On Halliday's model, an infant's pre-symbolic behaviour of 'social communion' is, as the name implies, social, not biological ('somatic'). That is, it is biological with the added component of value. The value, in this model, can be understood in terms of Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, which proposes that neural systems include inherited 'values', which bias the perceptual categorisation of experience toward categorisations that have been naturally selected to be of adaptive value to the organism's ancestors. This can be seen, for example, in the peacock's courtship display, where the fanning of a peacock's tail selects a perception of positive value in the neural system of a peahen. 

In the case of the 'social communion' of a human infant, the infant's 'expression with no symbolic content' selects a perception of positive value in the neural system of an adult, thus biasing the behaviour of the adult towards the caregiving of the infant, and through that, the strengthening of a social structure: a social bond between infant and caregiver.

Zappavigna & Martin's ‘Linguistic, ‘Epilinguistic, And Protolinguistic Body Language

 Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 22, 232-3):

Table 1.3 also provides us with a model for dealing with two dimensions of the relation between language and paralanguage, treated by Zappavigna and Martin (2018) as ‘linguistic body language’ and ‘epilinguistic body language’.²¹

²¹ Zappavigna and Martin’s (2018) dimension of protolinguistic body language has been subsumed in our current model as subtypes of somasis and interpersonal semovergent paralanguage. This avoids the problem of using the term ‘protolinguistic’ for a paralinguistic system making meaning alongside language (protolanguage, as initial emergent semiosis, by definition cannot accompany language), and it makes room for paralinguistic systems enabled by the discourse semantic system of APPRAISAL (see Chapter 2 for further discussion of this point).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here the authors misrepresent Cléirigh's model — protolinguistic, linguistic and epilinguistic body language — as the work of Zappavigna and Martin (2018). Plagiarism is defined as the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. Without Cléirigh's model of body language, the authors have no model, that is, nothing to rebrand as their model of paralanguage.

[2] This misunderstands Cléirigh's model. Protolinguistic body language cannot be subsumed as subtypes of somasis. On the one hand, protolinguistic body language is semiotic, whereas somasis is non-semiotic. On the other hand, protolinguistic body language does not require the ontogenesis of language, and is found in other socio-semiotic species, whereas epilinguistic body language ('semovergent paralanguage') does require the ontogenesis of language, and is not found in other socio-semiotic species.

[3] On the one hand, this is misleading because it is untrue. Protolanguage does accompany language, as exemplified by interjections in exclamations. Halliday (1994: 95):

Exclamations are the limiting case of an exchange; they are verbal gestures of the speaker addressed to no one in particular, although they may, of course, call for empathy on the part of the addressee. Some of them are in fact not language but protolanguage, such as Wow!, Yuck!, Aha! and Ouch!.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 425):

Interjections are certainly quite different from adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions; they tend to be protolinguistic remnants in adult languages.

On the other hand, it seriously misunderstands the model that the authors are plagiarising. On Cléirigh's model, protolinguistic, linguistic and epilinguistic systems accumulate in the lifetime of a human meaner, and the question then becomes 'How are the meanings of these different semiotic systems expressed in the gestures and postures of body language?'

[4] To be clear, there is no need to 'make room' for paralinguistic systems enabled by APPRAISAL, since these are, by definition, epilinguistic, and so 'semovergent' in the authors' terms. However, this raises the question of whether the paralinguistic systems that the authors identify are enabled by APPRAISAL, or are they to be found also in other protolinguistic species. And if found also in other protolinguistic species, it raises the question of whether the systems are, in Halliday's model of complexity, semiotic (symbolic value) or social (non-symbolic value), as in the exchange of value in eusocial insect colonies.