Interpersonal Paralanguage Resonating With Negotiation And Appraisal

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 11):

interpersonal paralanguage is ‘expressive’, resonating with NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL systems;

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is the authors' rebranding of the interpersonal dimension of Cléirigh's epilinguistic body language, a type that can be deployed with or without spoken language:

	semantics	kinetic expression
interpersonal	eg modality and polarity	ø eg oscillating hand (modalisation),  nodding or shaking head (polarity)

[2] To be clear, the expression plane of any semiotic system is expressive — of content.

[3] To be clear, NEGOTIATION is a genuine semantic system, being Martin's rebranding of Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION.  The authors provide no examples of gestures realising features from the system of NEGOTIATION, and despite the claim of "resonance" here, later dismiss the possibility (p15):

…semovergent paralanguage cannot be used to distinguish move types in dialogic exchanges…

[4] To be clear, APPRAISAL is also a genuine semantic system.  However,  the graduated attitudes of APPRAISAL are largely realised in protolinguistic body language, and every example of ATTITUDE provided by the authors is actually an instance of protolinguistic body language, not epilinguistic body language ("semovergent paralanguage").  (The examples claimed to be instances of GRADUATION and ENGAGEMENT will be examined later in situ.)