Misrepresenting Cléirigh's Ideas As Their Own

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 3):

We will in fact suggest that SFL’s tone group, analysed for rhythm and tone, provides an essential unit of analysis for work on paralanguage as far as questions of synchronicity across modalities are concerned.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here the authors misrepresent what Cléirigh's model of body language "suggests" as their own suggestion.  Of the three types of body language in Cléirigh's model, only one of them, 'linguistic' body language, is exclusively paralinguistic, and this type is concerned with bodily movements in time with the rhythm of speech and in tune with the pitch movements of speech.

[2] Significantly, given "their" suggestion, neither author is capable of analysing speech data into tone groups (intonation) and feet (rhythm).  The analyses were carried out by a non-author (Smith). (Cléirigh's PhD thesis was on systemic phonology.)

[3] This misunderstands Cléirigh's model.  It is not a matter of "synchronicity across modalities", but that the beats of body movements in time with speech function linguistically — rather than protolinguistically or epilinguistically.  This is why this aspect of body language is termed 'linguistic'.