Interpreting Purportedly Non-Semiotic Behaviours As Semiotic

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 6, 4, 29):

Physical activity covers material action involving some change in the relationship of one physical entity to another (walking, running, jumping, throwing, breaking, cutting, digging, pulling etc.). Biological behaviour can be divided into changes that restore comfort (sneezing, coughing, scratching, laughing, adjusting garments or hair etc.) and changes that index discomfort (nail biting, fiddling, fidgeting, wriggling, blushing, shivering, crying etc.). Social communion can be divided into mutual perception (sharing gaze, pitch, proximity, touch, smell etc.) and reciprocal attachment (tickling, cradling, holding hands, hugging, stroking, hugging, kissing, mating etc.). These proposals are outlined in Fig. 3.

Trained as we are as linguists and semioticians we are not ourselves in a strong position to further develop this model.⁹ 

⁹ For exemplary forays into this realm of inquiry see Martinec (1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2004), who models somasis as if it was semiosis, drawing on SFL theory to do so.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, these are construals of experience as material processes.

[2] To be clear, contrary to the authors' stated intention, interpreting these behavioural and material processes as meaning something other than themselves, as

• changes restoring comfort,
• indexing discomfort,
• social communion,
• reciprocal attachment

is modelling them as semiotic, not "somatic".

[3] This is misleading. To be clear, the authors mistakenly model semiosis as if it were 'somasis', whereas Martinec models semiosis as semiosis.