Introducing And Tracking Entities Through Finger Pointing

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 19, 21-2):

As far as pointing deixis is concerned we can return to the examples contrasting past and future in sections “Sonovergent paralanguage" and "Representation (ideational semovergent paralanguage)” above. Alongside motioning to the past the vlogger’s hand points there. And alongside motioning to the future both the vlogger’s index fingers point there (Figs. 33 and 34).

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the authors' claim (ibid.) is that:

From a textual perspective we need to take into account how spoken language introduces entities and keeps track of them once there (IDENTIFICATION) …

Clearly, because 'past' and 'future' are temporal locations, they are not entities, and pointing gestures do not introduce them as entities, nor keep track of them through the discourse.  This is another instance of the authors misrepresenting the data to fit their theory.

Note also that the unit of IDENTIFICATION in Martin (1992) and Martin & Rose (2007) is participant, not entity.

[2] Once again the authors present a tone group that is not analysed for tone or for foot boundaries, and wrongly analysed for tonicity (the tonic falls on next, not time).