Blurring The Distinction Between Linguistic And Epilinguistic Body Language

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 8-9, 7, 8):

The phonological system of TONALITY organises spoken language into waves of information called tone groups, with one salient syllable carrying this tone movement. Gestures tend to be co-extensive with this periodic unit. In examples (2) and (3) the vlogger makes a sweeping right-to-left gesture referencing past time; the gestures unfold in sync with the temporal extent of the tone group (Figs. 6 and 7).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here the authors confuse the content plane with the expression plane.  The phonological system of TONALITY is concerned with the duration of the tone group, a phonological unit.  The duration of the tone group realises the duration of the information unit, a grammatical unit.  It is the information unit that constitutes the "wave of information", not the tone group.  This is not a new confusion on Martin's part; Martin (1992: 384) mistakes the system of INFORMATION for a phonological/graphological system.

[2] This is a bare assertion unsupported by evidence, and falsified by the vast majority of gestures that do not extend for the duration of a tone group.  In Cléirigh's model, it is not that gestures tend to be co-extensive with the tone group, but that, when they do, the extent of the gesture has the same function as the extent of a tone group, namely: the realisation of the extent of an information unit.

[3] To be clear, in Cléirigh's model, a gesture that realises the meaning 'past' is epilinguistic body language, not linguistic body language.  In terms of Martin's rebrandings of his source, this is 'semovergent paralanguage', not 'sonovergent paralanguage'.  Metafunctionally, the meaning is interpersonal as well as experiential, since it also means 'past' relative to the time of the speech event.

[4] To be clear, in Cléirigh's model, it is only this aspect of the gesture, its co-extension with a tone group, that constitutes linguistic body language (rebranded by Martin as 'sonovergent paralanguage').  Metafunctionally, the meaning is textual, demarcating a unit of Given and New information.