An Epilinguistic Projection Of Protolinguistic Body Language

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 16, 18):

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 below, and we will return to this example in our discussion of mime in section “Emblems” below. 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 (Fig. 26).

// some guy was sitting there
// and there was cars behind him
// and he was like
// [mimics man’s expression]
// [mimics man’s gesture] like
// waving me out //

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, the relation between expression ('face and body') and content ('affect') is realisation, not commitment.  'Commitment' is Martin's misunderstanding of instantiation, as previously explained here.

[2] To be clear, the presentation of the data of tone groups is misleading.  These tone groups are not analysed for tone or tonicity, and there are no foot boundaries indicating the speech rhythm.  That is, the term 'tone group' is entirely redundant here, since the same point can be made by a simple transcript:

some guy was sitting there and there was cars behind him and he was like [mimics man’s expression] [mimics man’s gesture] like waving me out

The reason the term 'tone group' is used here is to give false support to the proposal (p3):

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.

[3] To be clear, this expression of exasperation realises ATTITUDE, not because it expresses an emotion, but because the exasperation enacts an assessment (of the speaker by a motorist).

In terms of Cléirigh's original model, contrary to the authors' interpretation, the motorist's ATTITUDE is realised in protolinguistic body language, not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent" paralanguage).  The gesture is a manifestation of a conscious state that functions socio-semiotically.

The vlogger's mime of the motorist's body language, on the other hand, is an instance of epilinguistic body language in which she projects the motorist's protolinguistic body language that assesses her.