Modelling Paralanguage Using Systemic Functional Semiotics
A Meticulous Review Of Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith and Zappavigna (2022)
20 May 2024
Textual Semovergent Paralanguage
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 38, 233):
From a textual perspective³² we need to take into account how spoken language introduces entities and keeps track of them once there (IDENTIFICATION) and how it composes waves of information in tone groups, clauses and beyond (PERIODICITY). Semovergent paralanguage potentially supports these resources with pointing gestures and whole body movement and position.
³² Martinec (1998) interprets textual meaning as realised through cohesion, following Halliday and Hasan (1976); as introduced earlier for this monograph we follow Martin (1992) who reinterprets cohesion as discourse semantics (Martin, 2014), organised metafunctionally in Martin and Rose ([2003] 2007) as ideational resources (IDEATION, CONNEXION), interpersonal resources (NEGOTIATION, APPRAISAL) and textual resources (IDENTIFICATION, PERIODICITY).
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Textual Semovergent Paralanguage.
Moreover, IDENTIFICATION is Martin's rebranding of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) grammatical cohesive systems of REFERENCE and ELLIPSIS-&-SUBSTITUTION, misunderstood, confused with ideational denotation and the interpersonal DEIXIS of nominal group structure, and relocated to discourse semantics; evidence here.
[2] To be clear, on the one hand, this confuses content (information) with expression (tone group), following Martin (1992: 384). On the other hand, on Cléirigh's original model, any aspect of body language that highlights the focus of New information, or delineates a unit of information, functions as linguistic body language ("sonovergent" paralanguage), not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent" paralanguage).
[3] To be clear, PERIODICITY is Martin and Rose's (2003, 2007) reinterpretation of what Martin (1992: 393) models as interstratal interaction patterns as a textual systems of Martin's discourse semantic stratum. However, Martin's model misrepresents writing pedagogy as linguistic theory, such that:
- introductory paragraph is rebranded as macro-Theme,
- topic sentence is rebranded as hyper-Theme,
- paragraph summary is rebranded as hyper-New, and
- text summary is rebranded as macro-New.
[4] To be clear, here Martin and his former student follow Martin (1992) in rebranding misunderstandings Halliday & Hasan's (1976) non-structural textual systems of lexicogrammar as structural discourse semantic systems across three metafunctions.
[5] To be clear, IDEATION is Martin's rebranding of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) textual system of LEXICAL COHESION, misunderstood, confused with logical relations between experiential elements of nominal group structure, also misunderstood, and relocated to discourse semantics as an experiential system; evidence here.
[6] To be clear, CONNEXION does not feature in Martin and Rose (2007), or in Martin (1992). The term 'CONNEXION' is a rebranding of Martin's CONJUNCTION by Martin's former student, Hao. CONJUNCTION is Martin's misunderstanding of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) textual lexicogrammatical system of cohesive conjunction as a logical system at the level of discourse semantics. Moreover, it confuses non-structural textual relations with structural logical relations, and misunderstands and misapplies the expansion relations involved; evidence here.
That is to say, CONJUNCTION was the only one of Halliday and Hasan's cohesive systems that Martin neglected to rebrand as his own system, and this oversight was finally addressed by his former student.
[7] To be clear, NEGOTIATION is Martin's (1992) rebranding of Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION.
18 May 2024
Voice Quality
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 38):
Voice quality was noted in Section 1.5.1 in relation to the sing/song pitch (high then low) movement the vlogger uses in her last four tone groups to close down her hair dye narrative. From the perspective of APPRAISAL the sound quality resonates with her feeling that she is resigned to her current hair colour, at least for now. Work on this interpersonal aural dimension of paralanguage, drawing on van Leeuwen (1999), will be further explored in Chapter 5.
Blogger Comments:
//3 hopefully / next ↑time I willis compared with an accurate phonological analysis:
//1 get my / ↓hair colour / back
//3 um / but for / ↑now
//3 this will / ↓do //
//3 hopefully / next time I willIt can be seen that:
//13 get my / hair colour / back
//3 um /but for / now
//1- this will / do //
- the first ↑ corresponds to the low-rising pitch of tone 3,
- the first ↓ corresponds to the falling pitch of tone 1,
- the second ↑ corresponds to the low-rising pitch of tone 3, and
- the second ↓ corresponds to the narrow falling pitch of tone 1–
Meaning of secondary tones In some cases the difference between a pair, or set, of secondary tones is mainly a matter of 'key', the degree of forcefulness or emotional intensity of the utterance. …
1. (medium), neutral; 1+ (wide), strong or unexpected; 1– (narrow), mild or expected.
16 May 2024
Engagement
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 37-8):
Turning to ENGAGEMENT, Hao and Hood (2019) note the significance of hand position as far as supporting the expansion and contraction of heteroglossia is concerned – with supine hands opening up dialogism and prone hands closing it down. In the following example the vlogger’s supine hands converge with the modalisation probably, reinforcing acknowledgement of the viewer’s voice:
Two moves later the hands flip over to prone position in support of the negative move shutting down the expectation that the vlogger was in control of the new colour of her hair.
Blogger Comments:
14 May 2024
De-centring Postures To Soften Focus
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 36-7):
Hao and Hood (2019) draw attention to the use of what they call de-centring postures to soften focus, using the example of a shoulder shrug converging with fairly non-contractile in a biology lecture. The paralinguistic generalisation here would appear to be loss of equilibrium, for example, asymmetrical facial expression, out-of-kilter posture or a rotating prone hand (interpretable as between prone and supine). Clear examples in our data are the faces the vlogger pulls as she struggles to name her skin condition in the second tone group, the second of which is accompanied by two shakes of her head.
(83) //4 anyway, it was
(84) //3 some / granu- / loma:: / ^ [out-breath] / something
(85) //1_ I don’t know – it’s / called – it’s / some sort of / skin thing. //
Blogger Comments:
The person shrugging emoji can designate ignorance, indifference, self-acceptance, passive-aggression, annoyance, giving up, or not knowing what to make of something. It could also be a visual form of the one-word response of indifference, “whatever.”
12 May 2024
Graduation: Focus
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 36):
Alongside paralanguage of this kind converging with force, Hood (2011) notes the potential for precise hand shapes and muscle tension to resonate with focus. In the following example, introduced as (67) and repeated below as (67''), the vlogger tightens her grip on the tiny virtual needle she is holding and frowns slightly in concentration as she role-plays the precision involved in the dermatologist piercing her bumps:
Blogger Comments:
10 May 2024
Graduation: Force
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 35-6):
The most striking example of intensification in the hair colour phase occurs when the vlogger uses whole body language to enact her reaction to how dark her hair is. She throws her head back and leans back as her arms rise up – literally overwhelmed with emotion (82).
Blogger Comments:
[2] To be clear, the intensification in this instance is of the Quality dark, which is ideational in function, and quite distinct from the speaker's hatred of the Quality, which is construed by the following clause. That is, the intensification is a feature of the assessed, not of the assessing (e.g. I really hate it). This is demonstrated by the fact that the arm gesture beats on the tonic so, the intensifier of dark.
In terms of Cléirigh's original model, the beating of the gesture on the tonic is linguistic body language ("sonovergent" paralanguage), highlighting so as the focus of contrastively New information, whereas any aspects of the body language expressing conscious states are instantiations of paralinguistic body language. That is, contrary to the authors' claim, no aspects of this instance of body language can be identified as epilinguistic ("semovergent").
[3] The claim that this gestural configuration expresses 'being overwhelmed by the emotion of hate' — literally or figuratively — requires considerable justification, none of which is given.
[4] To be clear, [82] displays an (incomplete and) incorrect phonological analysis — the tonic actually falls on so, not dark, the initial foot is omitted, and the pronoun I begins the following tone group (after a silent Ictus):
//1+ and it's / so dark //
08 May 2024
Graduation
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 35):
Turning to GRADUATION, as noted by Hood (2011) the size of hand shapes and the range of hand/arm motion can be used to support graded language. In (81) the sweeping extent of the hand/arm motion resonates with the large quantity of hair dye in stock (whole stack).
Blogger Comments:
06 May 2024
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.
04 May 2024
Affect
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 34):
As outlined by Martin and White (2005) attitude may not be explicitly inscribed in language but invoked by ideational choices a speaker expects a reaction to. We introduced an example of this in (64) earlier; a headshot from this image is blown up in (64''), as the vlogger introduces the good news that her hair dye is back in stock at Target. Her smiling face makes explicit the affect that her language does not.
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): The Meaning Of A Smile.
[2] Here again the authors deploy the logical fallacy of 'begging the question' (petitio principi), since they assume the point their argument needs to establish, namely that the speaker's smile realises an assessment: the goodness of the 'news that her hair dye is back in stock at Target' (the authors' interpretation, not the speaker's words).
This also means that, if an assessment is being realised by the smile, it is solely an assessment of Target. However, no assessment is being made here, the smile simply realises the speaker's positive emotion, as will be argued below.
meaning | kinetic expression | ||
action | regulatory | I want, refuse, threaten | ø eg raised fist, glower |
instrumental | give me, I invite you | ø eg extended hand | |
reflection | interactional | togetherness, bonding | ø eg mutual eye gaze |
personal | emotions | ø eg smiling face |
(adapted from Matthiessen 2007: 5)
02 May 2024
Appreciation
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 34, 233):
Paralanguage deploys facial expression and bodily stance to share attitude. In (75) our vlogger nuances her appreciation (exciting) of a neighbourhood get-together she has dressed up for with raised eyebrows and a lopsided-mouth expression³¹ (which we might read as indicating that some followers might not find it all that exciting).
³¹ The ‘out-of-kilter’ mouth here can be interpreted as soft focus, converging with kind of.
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Nuancing Appreciation By (Not) Looking Surprised.
In (semovergent) paralanguage, the meanings of ATTITUDE can be realised by facial expression and bodily stance.
[3] On Cléirigh's original model, the eyebrow raising here is an instance of linguistic body language (sonovergent paralanguage), not epilinguistic body language (semovergent body language). This would be obvious if the authors had included the tone choice of the accompanying tone group, which they wrongly analyse for tonicity. The speaker places the tonic on that's, marking it as the focus of New information, and uses tone 3 (level pitch):
//3 ^ so / that's / kind of ex/citing //
The tone group, which immediately follows an edit, begins at a high pitch and stays at that level throughout. The eyebrows do the same, and so function the same interpersonally as the tone choice; see [4].
[4] To be clear, the "lopsided mouth" is, in this instance, merely a feature of the speaker's anatomy.
The meaning that the authors attribute to the speaker's anatomy is actually the meaning realised by her eyebrow position and tone choice. As Halliday (1994: 305) points out, tone 3 with declarative mood can realise the KEY feature 'unimportant'. So here the speaker's interpersonal paralanguage does not "resonate" with the positive APPRECIATION realised in wording; in fact, it contradicts it — what psychologists call 'involuntary self-disclosure'.
[5] Leaving aside the fact that the authors have attributed the meaning realised by the speaker's eyebrow position to a permanent feature of the speaker's anatomy, the authors here provide no basis whatsoever for interpreting an 'out of kilter' mouth as realising the GRADUATION feature 'soft focus'. It is merely a bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument or evidence of any kind. Readers familiar with the field of multimodality will not be surprised by this, of course.
30 April 2024
Interpersonal Semovergent Paralanguage
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 33-4):
Evaluation (interpersonal semovergent paralanguage)
From an interpersonal perspective we need to take into account how spoken language inscribes attitudes, grades qualities and positions voices other than the speaker’s own (APPRAISAL). Semovergent paralanguage potentially resonates with APPRAISAL resources through facial expression, bodily stance, muscle tension, hand/arm position and motion (Hood, 2011; Ngo, 2018; Hao and Hood, 2019; Ngo, 2019) and voice quality (Caldwell, 2013). Whereas spoken language can make explicit attitudes of different kinds (emotional reactions, judgements of character and appreciation of things), paralanguage can only enact emotion. A further interpersonal restriction, setting aside emblems (e.g. the ‘thumbs-up’ or ‘OK’ gestures discussed in Section 1.6; cf. Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 2012), is that semovergent paralanguage cannot be used to support NEGOTIATION by distinguishing move types in dialogic exchanges (although sonovergent paralanguage can of course support tone choice in relation to these moves).
Blogger Comments:
With one misleading omission, this is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). The misleading omission is the wording '(as suggested by Cléirigh)' after 'A further interpersonal restriction'. Again, the plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.
Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Interpersonal Semovergent Paralanguage.
the instantiation of interpersonal meanings of semovergent paralanguage, realised in facial expression, bodily stance, muscle tension hand/arm position and motion and voice quality, "agrees with" the instantiation of interpersonal meanings of APPRAISAL systems.
- an ugly man — semantically: a conscious thing;
- a gorgeous blue — semantically: a quality;
- a breath-taking performance — semantically: a process;
- scoring that goal in extra-time was pure magic — semantically a figure;
- scoring one goal and setting up three more was sensational — semantically a sequence.
28 April 2024
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).
26 April 2024
Motion Used To Support Direction
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 33):
Motion can also be used to support direction in space or time. In Section 1.5.1 we illustrated two examples of hands sweeping right to left towards the past, concurring with the tone groups //2 bought / previously when I // (57) and // loved the / first time // (58). These contrast with left-to-right movement towards the future, concurrent with // hopefully next time I will //. This motion to the right is reinforced by a pointing gesture, which we discuss in Section 1.5.2.3 (as textual semovergence).
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Gestural Motion "Supporting" Direction In Space Or Time.
In examples (2) and (3) the vlogger makes a sweeping right-to-left gesture referencing past time;
If next time is interpreted as a circumstantial Adjunct, then, as a circumstance of Location, it signifies 'rest' not 'motion'. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 317):
However, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 612-3) list next time as an example of a conjunctive Adjunct (enhancement: spatiotemporal: complex). On this reading, the meaning of next time is textual in metafunction, rather than ideational.
In Martin (1992), however, cohesive conjunction in the grammar is misunderstood as a logical system of discourse semantics (now termed CONNEXION). That is, in Martin's terms, this gesture "concurs" with a logical relation between message parts in a message (here relabelled as figure and sequence, after Halliday & Matthiessen 1999). However, the authors failed to recognise it as an instance of Martin's CONNEXION.
24 April 2024
Motion On Its Own
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 32-3):
Motion can also occur on its own, without a hand shape concurring with an entity. For example, the vlogger uses a circular hand motion (two rotations) concurrent with the tone group //1 tried washing it / out it’s //.
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Failing To Account For Body Language Meaning.
22 April 2024
Hand Shapes
Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 32):
As noted earlier, for this paralinguistic sequence hand shape and motion are combined. In other cases hand shapes occur on their own. In the following sequence our vlogger concentrates on the size of the snack she has given her children, without setting the bowl in motion:
(70) //3 then they had a / snack I(71) //4 gave them / each a / bowl - like a heaping / bowl(72) //3 full of / Chex Mix and an(73) //4 applesauce / squeeze and they //
Blogger Comments:
This is recycled almost verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Gestures Realising Elements Rather Than Figures.
- then they had a snack
- I gave them each a bowl like a heaping bowl full of Chex Mix and applesauce squeeze