Embodied Sociolinguistics (coauthored with Mary Bucholtz)

Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1997

tion and culture as embodied phenomena (Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson, 1996). While these various approaches share many elements, we believe one is central: language, interaction, and culture can be most fruitfully investigated via the detailed examination of courses of conduct unfolding in real time. Celebrating the core, as well as the broadest, elements of this convergence, UCLA's 1997 Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture chose 'Embodiment in Discourse' as its theme. The fruits of this endeavor are collected in this volume. Contributing in the first place to their own disciplines of Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, Education, Germanic Languages, and Sociology, the following seven papers participate in the above described 'core' by relying on transcripts and video stills drawn from audio and video recorded data. Beyond this shared element, however, these papers are most striking for their range of focus. Briefly

Language in Society, 2012

In this article three viewpoints on the relation of body and language are discussed: the poststructuralist viewpoint of Judith Butler, the phenomenological viewpoint of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the postmodernist viewpoint of Jean-François Lyotard. The reason juxtaposing for these three accounts is twofold. First, the topic requires a combination of post-structuralist and phenomenological insights, and second, the accounts are supplementary.

Hypatia, 1991

This article argues against a conception of the body as providing a basis for truth claims within feminist discourse. Taking from Michèle Le Doeuffs theory of the work of the image within discourse, and Michel Foucault's “technologies of the self,” it is argued that the doubledness of the body (“who am I? and who is she?”) can be put to work to construct embodied enunicative positions within feminist theory.

2011

Phenomenology and Mind, 2011

The paper traces the particular quality of human existence as linguistic embodied existence. In asking whether language is like body, it spells out what linguistic experience entails and what kind of picture results from this analysis as grounding the “person” (following Gallagher & Zahavi’s definition) in space/time/body and language. Understanding linguistic existence as embodied existence also facilitates an argument against a representationalist view of language. Nietzsche’s concern is taken up and analyzed: Does the self-reflexivity resulting from linguistic experience threaten individuality? Against his pessimistic conclusion, the article suggests to see language as enabling the individual agent-self.

Functional Linguistics

This paper develops a framework for analysing paralanguage, initially inspired by systemic functional linguistic (hereafter SFL) research on early child language development. A distinction is drawn between non-semiotic behaviour (somasis) and meaning (semiosis), and within semiosis between language and paralanguage (using the term paralanguage to refer to semiosis dependent on language and realised through both sound quality and body language, the latter including facial expression, gesture, posture and movement). Within paralanguage a distinction is drawn between sonovergent resources in sync with or in tune with the prosodic phonology of spoken language, and semovergent resources supporting the ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning resources of spoken language's content plane. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the intermodal relations among language, paralanguage and other modalities of communication. Embodied meaning In this paper we introduce a social semiotic framework for analysing paralanguage. Our approach was inspired by Chris Cléirigh's contributions 1 to New South Wales Youth Justice Conferencing research consolidated in Zappavigna and Martin (2018) and Martin and Zappavigna (2018). 2 Cléirigh's work drew on Matthiessen's synopses (Matthiessen 2004; Matthiessen 2007; Matthiessen 2009) of Systemic Functional Linguistic (hereafter SFL) research on early child language development. Following Matthiessen (2009) we use the term paralanguage to refer to gestural resources arranged along what McNeill (1992) christened as 'Kendon's Continuum' (gesticulation, pantomime and emblems), along with the vocalisations outlined in van Leeuwen (1999) not usually included in linguistic descriptions of the segmental and prosodic phonology of spoken language (timbre, tempo, tension, pitch range etc.). In this paper however we will consider only gestural systems. There are of course many ways to classify gestural resources. Kendon 2004 (Chapter 6) provides a thorough historical survey. The most useful vantage point from which to compare classifications is Kendon's Continuum. The introductory chapters in McNeill (McNeill 2000a, 2000b; McNeill 2012) include clear presentations of the model outlined in Fig. 1 below (taken from Sekine et al. 2013). We will cross-reference our work to this model as we present our framework, setting aside the sign languages of deaf communities (ASL, BSL, Auslan, LSF etc.) since these are languages in their own right (themselves involving paralanguage; Johnston 2018).

This chapter will highlight an approach to language that can take account of a process of articulation that unfolds contents that cannot be conceived as representative referents. The kind of practice needed for this process highlights an interactive dimension involved in articulation. It enables the formulation of background patterns which usually function in what is said. Drawing on A. Damasio's 'somatic markers' as manifesting learned structures in a bodily way, and on G. Gendlin's 'felt sense' as a feeling of complex content, I want to demonstrate how cultural as well as biographical 'contexts' that function in the meaning of what we say, can themselves become more articulate, thus opening up creative new realms of meaning that can enhance (interpersonal as well as transcultural) understanding.