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M. Zappavigna, J. Martin, Discourse and Diversionary Justice,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-63763-1_5
5
Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody
Language
1 Introduction
e previous chapter explored the kinds of feelings that are expressed in
a youth justice conference, drawing on the appraisal framework (Martin
and White 2005) to interpret the function of evaluative language in dif-
ferent steps of the macro-genre. is chapter extends this analysis to con-
sider how those feelings are negotiated in interactions between conference
participants. is means accounting for how feelings become associated
with particular ideas in these interactions—i.e. how participants construe
dierent kinds of values as ‘couplings’ of evaluation and ideation (as eval-
uations of things). It also means exploring the critical role that body lan-
guage plays in the way these couplings are negotiated, since sharing or
contesting values in the conferences is a multimodal endeavour—it inevi-
tably involves incorporating spoken discourse and other modes of
meaning- making in the service of forging, contesting and maintaining
social bonds.
e multimodal nature of the performance enacted by the Young
Person (YP) is regularly noted in work on conferencing. Non-verbal
200
meaning, for example, is cited as key to the YP’s ability to appear appro-
priately remorseful for their behaviour:
A complex sequence of actions, words, body language, and symbolic
exchanges occurs in the course of a YP’s ‘taking responsibility for an
oence’, ‘showing remorse’, and wishing to ‘repair the harm’, and the vic-
tim’s ability to explain the impact of the oence and to ‘read’ the YP’s sense
of contrition and the genuineness of an apology. (Daly 2003: 223)
Important here is the question of how the multimodal repertoire of a YP,
conditioned by the demands of the macro-genre and mediated by the
interpersonal pressure of the circle conguration of a conference, can
construe a suitably remorseful persona. What kind of body language
should a ‘redeemed’ YP persona produce? Equally signicant is the related
issue of how the YP uses these multimodal resources to create alignments
with other participants. We will begin by considering the kinds of social
bonds that the YPs construe from a monomodal perspective, looking at
the values that unfold in discourse through couplings of ideational and
evaluative meanings (in the following section); we then move on to con-
sider the role of body language in relation to how these values are negoti-
ated as social bonds.
2 From Feeling toBelonging: TheRole
of‘Coupling’ inAffiliation
us far in this book we have considered the language used by partici-
pants in conferencing by looking at how participants are positioned
within the conferencing macro-genre, and how they use the linguistic
resources available to them. is, however, is an incomplete picture if we
consider conference interaction from the perspective of social aliation
and attempt to answer the dicult question of how, by expressing feel-
ings, we negotiate values that bind us into dierent kinds of communi-
ties. In order to explore this further we need to consider how values are
negotiated in discourse.
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
201
Following Knight (2010: 43) we treat the bonds negotiated when
personae interact as shared ‘couplings’ of ideation and attitude (cou-
plingsof the ‘reference’ of what we are saying with its evaluation)—the
communion of epistemology with axiology if you will. Knight’s theory of
aliation, developed through analysis of conversational humour, describes
how communal identities are discursively negotiated in texts as personae
rally around, defer or reject dierent ideation–attitude couplings (Knight
2008, 2010, 2013):
Specically, couplings realize bonds of value with experience linguistically,
as bonds are on a higher order of abstraction in the socio-cultural context.
We discursively negotiate our communal identities through bonds that we
can share, and these bonds make up the value sets of our communities and
culture, but they are not stable and xed. (Knight 2010: 43)
For example, consider an extract from the Mobile Phone YJC where the
Convenor probes the YP for his reaction to his parents hearing about the
oence:
Extract 5.1, Mobile Phone YJC
Convenor: And what did dad say when he got here?
YP: He (was) just asking why am I here? And the police told him.
Convenor: And was he happy? Did he say anything to you?
YP: Don’t go anywhere.
Convenor: As in when you get home you’ve got to stay home? Do you think
your father was disappointed in you?
YP: Yep.
….
Convenor: Do you think you deserved the lecture? Why did you deserve the
lecture?
YP: Because I did something wrong.
…
Convenor: Do you think that mum and dad were disappointed in you?
Were you disappointed in yourself? Or Not? Or you don’t care?
YP: Yeah.
Convenor: Yeah or you don’t care?
YP: Disappointed in myself.
2 From Feeling toBelonging: TheRole of‘Coupling’ inAffiliation
202
In this extract, the Convenor puts forward for negotiation three cou-
plings by asking (i) whether the YP’s father was happy when he arrived at
the police station, (ii) whether he was disappointed in the YP and (iii)
whether the YP’s mother and father together were disappointed in him.
She also instigates the proposal of two couplings by the YP—namely that
he did something wrong and that he is disappointed in himself. In all,
ve potential bonds are proposed (couplings of ideation and attitude are
presented in square brackets, with the trigger or target of the attitude
before the slash and the attitude after):
Convenor asks [ideation: father/attitude: happy]
Convenor asks [ideation: father/attitude: disappointed]
YP proposes [ideation: Young Person/attitude: wrong]
Convenor asks [ideation: Mum & Dad/attitude: disappointed]
YP proposes [ideation: Young Person/attitude: disappointed]
Each of these couplings of ideation and attitude is negotiated as shared
feelings in this text, and so, in Knight’s (2010) terms, they enact social
bonds. As mentioned earlier, these bonds are negotiated not just through
spoken language but also through the body language used by the confer-
ence participants. us, in order to explore the role of postural and ges-
tural semiosis in negotiating the bonds associated with the kinds of
coupling that we have introduced, it is rst necessary to outline the
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of body language in which
our work is grounded.
3 A Metafunctionally Organized Model
ofBody Language
During our preliminary eld observations of Convenor-training work-
shops, the important role of body language in conferencing was noted by
both trainers and practitioners. Prominent in this training were animated
discussions about the interpretability of ‘body language’, advice about
seating arrangements and dress choices, anecdotal wisdom about the
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
203
emotional dynamics of an ideal-typical conference and other performance-
related behaviours. Apart from an early article by Retzinger and Sche
(1996) which notes the importance of facial expression, gestures and
physical posture in conferencing for the communication of emotions and
negotiation of social bonds, there is little in the youth justice conferenc-
ing research literature which matches up specically to these conference
Convenor concerns.
We undertake the analysis of body language presented here not only
because the meanings negotiated in a conference cannot be fully inter-
preted on the basis of one modality alone, but because body language
gives us an important insight into the bonding process agged by Knight
(2010). e model of body language that we have used in this study
arose out of previous work investigating the co-patterning of gesture and
phonological structure, viewed as sibling systems on language’s expres-
sion plane (Zappavigna etal. 2009). Analysis of body language is a new
region in SFL-based multimodal discourse analysis, although it is rela-
tively well established in other disciplines such as anthropology and cog-
nitive science (Efron 1941; Morris 1979; McNeill 1992; Goldin-Meadow
and Singer 2003; Kendon 2004). SFL-oriented work has included
exploration of gesture realizing experiential process types and interper-
sonal meaning (Martinec 2000, 2001), an article on face-to-face teach-
ing in classrooms (Hood 2011) and a case study of the nonverbal
communication of a child with an intellectual disability (Dreyfus 2011).
ese perspectives arise out of Halliday’s (1985) initial framing of ges-
ture as paralinguistic—as a resource functioning to support language
systems. Gestures are, in Halliday’s model, ‘not part of the grammar, but
rather additional variations by which the speaker signals the import of
what he is saying’ (Halliday 1985: 30). As a mode of expression, gesture
has a prosodic structure which we might think of as akin to an intona-
tion contour because of its tendency to range over a number of gram-
matical units.
Our model of body language shares with Kendon (2004: 125) the
notion that gesture is ‘fully integrated’ into the expression of meaning as an
‘ensemble’ and as ‘a partner with speech in the utterance as nally
c onstructed’ (Kendon 2004: 111). Cléirigh (2011) further species this
3 A Metafunctionally Organized Model ofBody Language
204
partnership by factoring body language as three distinct semiotic systems:
protolanguage, language and epilanguage. In brief, as a protolinguistic
system, body language sustains the kinds of meanings a small child can
make with infant protolanguage (Painter 1998; Halliday 1977); as a lin-
guistic system it functions in sync with, and as a reinforcement of, speech
rhythm and intonation; and as an epilinguistic system it works to illustrate
verbal meanings (drawing in the air as it were). Each of these systems of
body language is introduced in more detailbelow, beginning with linguis-
tic body language and then moving on to the epilinguistic and protolin-
guistic systems.
In exploring intermodal co-patterning of this kind we used ELAN
(Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 2008), a software tool that
allowed us to track multiple data series while concurrently tracking the
time series of the video text. ese data series took the form of dierent
‘annotation tiers’. For example, the layers shown at the bottom of Fig.5.1
correspond to a number of types of annotation (e.g. tone groups) that
were applied to the video shown in the upper left side of the screen. e
analysis also appears on the transcript shown to the right of the image.
Fig. 5.1 An example of tone group analysis performed using ELAN
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
205
Below this can be seen the waveform of the audio track and the time
series. e ability to link the properties of the audio track and the video
track with the time series in relation to the various annotation tiers meant
that we had a powerful tool for doing intermodal analysis. We were able
to consider how posture, gesture and speech all worked together in an
interaction, as we will see in the examples of body language analysis
shown later in this chapter.
4 Linguistic Body Language
As a linguistic system, body language works in tandem with language. For
example, it is produced (relatively) synchronously with the rhythm of the
spoken language or in tune with its major pitch movement. As Table5.1
species, the meanings realized may be textual or interpersonal, but they
are not ideational.
e Ethnic Community Liaison Ocer (ECLO) in the Aray YJC
produced many examples of linguistic body language used to realize
salience. For example, he devoted a large amount of semiotic energy to
emphasize his message in an attempt to hold the YP’s attention so as
to inuence his behaviour. In so doing, he made use of dierent beat-
Table 5.1 Linguistic body language (Cléirigh 2011)
Lexicogrammatical
systems
Prosodic expression
Phonology Kinetic
Potential focus of
new information
Salience Gestural beat (hand, head) in
sync with the speech rhythm
Textual Focus of new
information
Tonicity Gestural beat (hand, head) in
sync with the tonic
placement
Information
distribution
Tonality Gestural beat (hand, head)
co-extensive with tone
group
Interpersonal Key Tone Gestural beat (eyebrow,
hand) in tune with the tone
choice
4 Linguistic Body Language
206
ing gestures where we he would repetitively beat one part or another
of his body (e.g. his hand), either in the air, against his body or on the
tabletop, increasing the frequency of the beat on salient syllables in his
talk. is kind of body language often occurred at moments when he
was attempting to emphasize the reintegrative aim of the conference to
the YP:
Extract 5.2, School Library YJC
ECLO: If I didn’t care about you, man, I didn’t care about your mum, I
didn’t care about, you know, the Den and everything, I wouldn’t
even be here. I mean, I’ve nished my work. But if we– if every-
one here today could help you just to sort of think to yourself,
‘What am I doing to my family? What am I doing to myself?’,
man, Salaam. at’s what it’s all about. at’s what today is all
about. It’s about you sitting down and having a look –
When the ECLO calls attention to the function of the conference in
his verbiage, saying ‘at’s what today is all about’, he raises the frequency
with which he beats his clasped hand (shown in the second bottom row
of Table5.2). is gesture involves clasping his hands together and beat-
ing the chest on salient syllables, with a beat aorded to the tonic seg-
ment (the unit of rhythm featuring the main pitch movement in a tone
group) realizing the culmination of ‘new’ information (Halliday and
Greaves 2008).
Increasing salience by using linguistic body language can also function
to increase the intensity of evaluations (graduation in Martin and White
2005)) that the ECLO makes about the YP’s behaviour. Again, increased
frequency of a beating gesture supported the increase in salience. By beat-
ing on (interpersonal) evaluative meanings, and thus giving them (tex-
tual) salience, the gestures also served to upscale those attitudes in terms
of graduation. For example, the ECLO says ‘Your behavior is getting you
into trouble, man’, while adopting an arched hand position with ngers
fanned and beating his ngers on the table in front of him (Table5.3).
e beats fall on ‘get-’ and every subsequent syllable in the tone group,
highlighting the negative judgement.
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
207
Table 5.2 Increased salience realized as increased frequency of gestural beatsa
Tone type Tone 1
Tone group Pretonic segment Tonic segment
Feet that’s is what to day is all a bout
Gesture
Clasp beats towards chest on salient syllable, with extra beat
on ‘a(bout)’
Gestural beats ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄
aThe diamonds in the bottom row of the tables represent gestural beats
Table 5.3 Increased salience scaling up evaluationa
Tone type Tone 1
Tone group Pretonic segment Tonic segment
Feet ∧ is getting you into trouble man
Gesture Finger-fanned right hand arches right beating the desk on
salient ‘get-’ and beats on every following syllable
Gestural
beats
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄
aThe caret (^) in the rhythm analysis (feet row in tables) signifies a silent beat at
the beginning of a foot
4 Linguistic Body Language
208
5 Epilinguistic Body Language
As epilanguage, body language realizes textual, interpersonal and ide-
ational meaning (Table5.4). Epilinguistic body language includes ges-
tures such as those that involve drawing in the air. In the absence of
speech, these epilinguistic gestures are thought of as mime.
An example of epilinguistic body language that contributes to the real-
ization of meaning iconically (Martinec 2000) is the reference that the
ECLO in the Aray YJC makes to police during the Interpretation in
Extract 5.3.
Extract 5.3, Aray YJC
ECLO: And, mate, police can defend themselves. Do you understand?
I’m not going to speak for police.
In this instance, the ECLO slaps one hand on another when he talks
of police being able to ‘defend’ themselves, a gesture iconic to the action
of fending o an attacker (Table5.5).
Table 5.4 Epilinguistic body language (Cléirigh 2011)a
Meaning Kinetic Expression
Ideational PHENOMENA: elemental (and
configurational)
Drawing shapes; mimicking
movements with hands
Textual E.g. IDENTIFICATION: exophoric vs
endophoric; personal vs
demonstrative (near speaker,
near addressee, near both,
near neither)
Pointing with hands, eyes,
head: (exophoric: pointing
to material and semiotic
phenomena in the field of
perception; endophoric:
pointing to regions of
gesturing space)
Interpersonal E.g. MODALITY; POLARITY E.g. oscillating hand
(MODALITY); nodding head
(POLARITY)
aFor explanation of the technical SFL terms in this table, see Halliday and
Mattheissen (2014), Martin and Rose (2003/2007)
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
209
Another example of epilinguistic body language in this conference
involves gesture used to realize deixis, identifying persons in the exchange
(cf. Kendon 2004) on deictic gestures). For instance, when the ECLO
says the following(Extract 5.4), he identies two types of participants
with pointing gestures: the people seated around the table and the YP.
Extract 5.4, School Library YJC
ECLO: But if we– if everyone here today could help you just to sorta
think to yourself, ‘What am I doing to my family? What am I
doing to myself?’, man, Salaam. at’s what it’s all about. at’s
what today is all about. It’s about you sitting down and having a
look –
He also makes a circular gesture to refer to everyone at the table and
points at the YP to identify him (Table5.6). His gestural expression thus
varies with the meaning being distinguished: circular for plural 1st person
‘we all’, pointed for singular 2nd person ‘you’. He also couples the Deictic
‘here’ with a downward pointing gesture.
Table 5.5 Gesture representing a process
Tone type Tone 1
Tone group Pretonic segment Tonic segment
Feet ∧ po lice can de fend them selves
Gestural beat
Left hand moves left on ‘police’, then claps right hand on
‘defend’ into clasp
5 Epilinguistic Body Language
210
Table 5.6 Gesture realizing deixis
Tone type Tone 4
Tone group Pretonic segment Tonic segment
Feet but if we can ∧ if everybody here could help you to day
Gesture
Right hand moves out and
left and around table for
‘everybody’ (simultaneously
mimicked by head swivel)
Points down
at table
for ‘here’
and points to YP for
‘you’ (personal
reference)
reclasping at
‘today’
Gestural beat
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
211
6 Protolinguistic Body Language
As a protolinguistic system, body language develops in individuals out of
infant protolanguage with its kinological expression organized micro-
functionally. Cléirigh (2011), following Halliday (1975), denes proto-
linguistic body language as follows:
‘Protolinguistic’ body language systems are those ‘left behind’ in the transition
to the mother tongue (i.e. not incorporated into language), but nevertheless
expanded from the pre-linguistic systems and contextually dierent, since it is
not used instead of language by non-language users, but can be deployed by
language users with or without speech. Whereas prosodic and mimetic body
language are used with speech, and their meanings are those of language,
protolinguistic body language occurs with both speech or silence, and their
meanings are not those of language, but protolanguage. (Cléirigh 2011: 6)
Cléirigh’s (2011) model draws directly upon Halliday’s (1975) analysis of
the microfunctions that emerge during the protolinguistic phase of lan-
guage development (). In infant protolanguage, meaning making is
microfunctional (since it is a simple system of signs, with no combinato-
rial potential), rather than metafunctional (and so involving the comple-
mentary ideational, interpersonal and textual dimensions of the adult
language). ere are four possible microfunctions which may be expressed
in the body language of a speaker who has developed language:
• e regulatory (‘do as I tell you’), e.g. a mother raising her nger at
her child while giving an instruction
• e interactional (‘me and you’), e.g. a mother and child looking lov-
ingly at one another
• e instrumental (‘I want’), e.g. a friend extending their hand toward
you so that you pass something to them
• e personal (‘here I come’), e.g. a friend sobbing while telling you
something negative that has happened to them
Halliday groups the meanings that can be made with these microfunc-
tions according to whether they involve an active or reective mode of
consciousness, as shown in Table5.7.
6 Protolinguistic Body Language
212
Taking note of protolinguistic body language is crucial for understand-
ing the multimodal meaning being made in an interaction. For example,
the YP in the Mobile Phone YJC mainly oered monosyllabic responses
to the Convenor’s questions; based on a transcript of the verbiage alone,
this gives an impression of a YP who is not engaging with the process.
However, if we inspect his body language, we see that he maintains
mutual eye gaze with the Convenor throughout her Extension of his
recount, indicating that he is indeed paying attention.
We have introduced the three semiotic systems of body language sepa-
rately (for explanatory purposes); however, it is important to note that
they work in tandem with one another in real discourse. For example,
consider a teacher in a classroom leaning forward (protolinguistic body
language), pointing at three students (epilinguistic body language: tex-
tual deictic) while saying ‘you and you and you, outside now!’, tapping
the air with her index nger each time she says ‘you’ (linguistic body
language). e teacher enacts this protolinguistic, epilinguistic and lin-
guistic semiosis with her body as a single performance, together with the
meanings made in her spoken discourse. From the perspective of the lan-
guage user, the performance is seamless, but by modelling the body lan-
guage as three distinct systems we can see the dierent strands of meaning
at play.
7 Body Language andtheSmall Target
Young Person Identity
As noted throughout this volume, the YPs in our sample tend to adopt
what can be thought of as a ‘small target’ persona, attempting to mini-
mize the extent to which they come under negative scrutiny in the com-
missioned recount. ey correspondingly adopt postures that support
Table 5.7 Protolinguistic body language (Cléirigh 2011)
Meaning Kinetic expression
Action Regulatory I want, refuse, threaten E.g. raised fist, glower
Instrumental Give me, I invite you E.g. extended hand
Reflection Personal Emotions E.g. smiling face
Interactional Togetherness, bonding E.g. mutual eye gaze
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
213
this kind of identity: slouching inwards in their chairs (Fig.5.2) or with
hands in their laps or arms crossed (Fig.5.3). Some YPs sit with their
ankles crossed and legs extending into the circle (Figs.5.3 and 5.4).
e YP in the Mobile Phone YJC is an example of a YP who maintains
this kind of small target identity throughout the conference. During all
exchanges with the Convenor during the commissioned recount he
remains a compliant subject, responding to the Convenor’s Dk1 moves
with short responses that sometimes consist simply of epilinguistic inter-
personal body language such as shaking or nodding his head. roughout
the Extension and Interpretation stages of this genre he maintains
frequent eye contact with the Convenor, always looking at her directly
when he responds. e following exchange is an example of this pattern
(the body language analysis shown in Table5.8):
Extract 5.5, Mobile Phone YJC
Convenor: Do you think your father was disappointed in you?
YP: Yep.
Fig. 5.2 YP body language during the commissioned recount, Mobile Phone YJC
7 Body Language andtheSmall Target Young Person Identity
214
Fig. 5.4 YP body language during the commissioned recount, School Library YJC
Fig. 5.3 YP body language during the commissioned recount, Guide Dog YJC
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
215
is exchange centres on negotiation of the following coupling:
[ideation: father/attitude: aect + judgement (hybrid1)]
e YP compliantly accepts the bond proposed by the Convenor
through this coupling, which was designed to prompt the YP to evaluate
his behaviour.
8 The Role ofBody Language
inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond
byBond’ Analysis
us far we have introduced the notion that body language plays a role
in supporting the types of interaction we have seen in conferences and
have suggested a metafunctional model of body language that can be
used to illuminate the role it plays in negotiating feelings in these interac-
tions. We will now attempt to work ‘bond by bond’ through a particular
interaction in a conference by way of illustrating how this type of analysis
explains how body language functions in the exchanges.
Table 5.8 YP’s body language during the commissioned recount, Mobile Phone
YJC—‘Do you think your father was disappointed in you?’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic eye contact while
answering, hands
clasped in lap,
shoulders slightly
slouched
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
nods
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
216
By way of contrast to the small target persona considered briey (which
we will return to in Chap. 6 in further discussion of identity), the School
Library YJC is an interesting conference in our sample because it involved
two YPs who did not take up this typical identity, and who were instead
quite resistant to the readings of their behaviour promoted by the
Convenor and Youth Liaison Ocers in the conference. e body lan-
guage of these YPs supported this resistance. is section will explore the
role this body language plays as these Young Oenders propose various
controversial bonds to the other participants, resulting in the YLO inter-
vening with his description of the boys as ‘ued-up roosters’.
We will begin this analysis at the beginning of a phase of a School
Library YJC where one of the YPs (YP1) rejects the label that he imagines
the Convenor has ascribed to him—namely that he is a rat from
Bridgeton. Indeed, the two YPs in this conference resist many of the
comments made about them. For example, consider their reaction to the
Convenor’s comment that the oence has had a negative impact on the
Victim.
Extract 5.6, School Library YJC
Convenor: It’s aected his life.
YP1: Yeah I know it has. at’s what I am saying. It’s changed a lot.
I– I do realize what we’ve done==
Convenor: ==Well the snickering and the smiling doesn’t make me think
that==
YP1: ==(…) Yeah well I’m not a rat from Bridgeton.
Convenor: W– I know that.
YP1: I’m not one of those friggin’ retarded people that just say ‘oh
yeah I done that. I w– I’ll do it again’. (…) I’ll do everything
that I can to change everything that’s happened. Seriously.
Walk the streets, mate. Go have fun. Go get drunk. Do what-
ever. Party on. (…)
It is the body language of YP1 here that the Convenor ags as transgres-
sive conference behaviour when she comments on his smiling and snicker-
ing. e smirking demonstrates to her that YP1 has not been taking the
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
217
discourse of the Victim seriously and that body language of this kind is
undermining the redressive power of the conference macro-genre.
e YP1’s reply to the Convenor, ‘Yeah I know it has. … I do realize
what we’ve done’, with contradictory stress on do (phonologically//1 ^
/do/realize/what we’ve/done//), is the rst verbal move in this conference
where the ‘angry boy’ persona clearly emerges. e full impact of this
shift in the conference discourse can only be appreciated by looking
beyond the verbal transcript alone. Here we see this YP leaning forward,
engaged in the circle, but relatively self-contained with his hands clasped
and his feet crossed; he does not make eye contact with the Convenor
until the end of his turn, when he looks up to his left at her to check on
the impact of his rebuttal (Table5.9).
YP1 then looks away again, protesting that he is not a ‘retarded’ per-
son; this coupling of ideation and attitude is supported by linguistic body
language (falling gesture with right arm on retarded). Epilinguistically the
key feature during this gesture is the palms-down prone position of his
hands (see screen capture in Table5.10). Following Hood (2011) we
interpret this gesture, in terms of appraisal theory (Martin and White’s
2005) engagement system in particular), as contracting the dialogic
space as YP1 further dismisses the Convenor’s accusation.
Table 5.9 YP1’s body language—‘I’m not a rat from Bridgeton’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic no eye contact while speaking,
leaning forward, hands clasped,
feet crossed;
eye contact with Convenor at end
of turn
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
218
[ideation: YP1/attitude: not retarded]
YP1: I’m not one of those friggin’ retarded people…
e main shifts in body language as YP1 continues his rejection of the
charge of insincerity is to raise one or both arms with hands in supine
palms-up position. is supine hand position contrasts to the prone
palms-down position in terms of how it interplays with engagement in
the verbiage. Supine hands tend to support a meaning of ‘opening-up’
the conversational space to include other voices, while prone hands tend
to ‘close o’ other positions (Hood 2011) (Table5.11). He does this in
support of four of his ve tone groups in the corresponding spoken dis-
course, as he quotes what a ‘friggin’ retarded’ person might say and pro-
Table 5.11 YP1’s body language—‘I’ll do everything that I can to…’
Body language system Description
Protolinguistic No eye contact, leaning forward, feet crossed, hands
clasped (except for gestures); eye contact with
Victim at end of turn
Linguistic textual Raises arms, opens hands for four of his five tone
groups
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
Palm-up supine hand position during linguistic
gestures
Table 5.10 YP1’s body language—‘I’m not one of those friggin’ retarded people’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic no eye contact while speaking,
leaning forward, feet crossed,
hands clasped (except for
gesture);
eye contact with Convenor at end
of turn
Linguistic
interpersonal
right arm rises and falls in tune
with tone (tone 1 high falling)
Linguistic textual right arm falls in sync with major
pitch movement (tonic syllable
retarded)
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
palm down prone hand during
linguistic gesture
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
219
poses how he will otherwise behave. is expands the play of voices in the
conference—YP1’s voice among others. Of interest here as far as sincerity
is concerned is the reaction of the Victim’s mother, who holds her face in
her hands, shaking her head in disbelief.
Extract 5.7, School Library YJC
YP1: … that just say ‘oh yeah I done that. I w– I’ll do it again’. … I’ll
do everything that I can to change everything that’s happened.
Seriously.
YP1 then proposes a bond to his Victim, assuring him that he has
nothing more to fear when he goes out and possibly ‘parties on’. e oer
of security is welcome in the YJC macro-genre, but the categorization of
the Victim as someone (presumably like YP1 and YP2) who likes to go
out, have fun, get drunk and party on is a generically inappropriate con-
strual (and acknowledged as such through YP1’s half smile and full smiles
from his sister and YP2). e ‘party boy/no worries’ coupling at stake
here is parleyed protolinguistically through eye contact with the Victim
as YP1 continues to lean forward (Table5.12). Epilinguistically, YP1 uses
hand motions to mime a heading-o movement illustrating ‘Walk the
streets, mate’. He culminates this turn with open palm-supine hand ges-
tures both before and after ‘Party on’, nodding in reinforcement of his
oer. ese supine gestures appear to function to support a meaning of
‘oering’ the coupling for negotiation in the interaction.
[ideation: Victim partying/attitude: secure]2
YP1: Walk the streets, mate. Go have fun. Go get drunk. Do whatever.
Party on. (…)
YP1’s transgressive categorization of his Victim as a party boy in fact
precipitates an arguably intemperate intervention by the Youth Liaison
Ocer (YLO), who denigrates YP1 and YP2 as barnyard roosters, lord-
ing over their ock. e YLO uses eye contact and a deictic hand gesture
to address both YP1 and YP2. He supports ‘No one’s going to stop me’
with two downward beats of his right arm, and most signicantly, mimes
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
220
Table 5.12 YP1’s body language—‘Walk the streets, mate’
Body language system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic eye contact with Victim, leaning forward, feet
crossed, hands clasped (except for epilinguistic
gestures);
half-smile after ‘party on’
Linguistic textual motion gesture in sync with ‘walk the streets’;
nodding in rhythm with ‘party on’
Epilinguistic ideational right arm gesture miming moving with ‘walk the
streets’
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
nodding in affirmation of ‘party on’ offer;
supine hands gesture before and after ‘party on’
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
221
the ued-up rooster three times (while saying ‘all ued up’, ‘all ued
up’ and ‘I’m here’) (Table5.13).
[ideation: YP1 & YP2 barge through/attitude: arrogant pride (hubris)]
YLO: See you two guys are a bit like the old farmyard rooster.
YP1: e what?
YLO: All farmyard roosters are all ued up and want to impress peo-
ple. So you go into the school grounds all ued up ready to go
and then you want to impress people so you barge through and
just ‘I’m here. I’m here to do what I like. No one’s going to stop
me’==
YP1: ==No.
YP2: ==(…) [shakes head then folds arms]
YP1 verbally rejects this coupling proposed by the YLO, and YP2
refuses to bond by withdrawing eye contact, shaking his head folding his
arms and leaning back (Table5.14).
YP1 doesn’t simply withdraw in exasperation from the bond proposed
but mocks it, ippantly imitating the YLO’s rooster mime. He can also be
seen to laugh snidely under his breath at the YLO (Table5.15). is is an
insolent challenge to the YLO’s authority, with both YP1 and the YLO now
interacting well outside the normal bounds of the conferencing genre.
Table 5.13 YLO’s body language—‘See you two guys are a bit like the old farm-
yard rooster’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic eye contact with YP1 (initial and
final glance at YP2), leaning
forward, arm muscle tension
Linguistic
interpersonal
falling right arm in tune with tone
1 //no one’s /going to /stop me//
Linguistic textual bouncing fluffing gesture in sync
the rhythm (x3);
right arm beats in sync with ‘stop
me’
Epilinguistic
ideational
arm motion/position miming
fluffed up rooster, clenched fist
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
222
As the YLO continues, YP1 makes three embodied moves (Table5.16).
To begin he disengages protolinguistically, lowering his gaze to the oor,
leaning back and scratching the back of his head with his left arm. He
then resumes eye contact, re-crosses his feet and half-smiles; epilinguisti-
cally he places his left hand on his chin, as if considering the YLO’s
charge. Finally, he disengages again, with a full smile and slight laugh,
interrupting his epilinguistic gesture as he scratches his left cheek. e
YLO continues:
Extract 5.8, School Library YJC
YLO: … and then you want to impress people so you barge through
and just ‘I’m here. I’m here to do what I like. No one’s going to
stop me’.
Matters soon get worse as YP1’s sister breaks down, tearing up while
attempting to defend him from the ued-up rooster charge and has to
Table 5.14 YP2’s body language—rejecting YLO’s bond
Body language system Description
Protolinguistic No eye contact, leaning back, shakes head
Epilinguistic interpersonal Folds arms
Table 5.15 YP1’s body language—imitating YLO’s ‘fluffed-up rooster’ gesture
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic feet crossed, eye
contact, leaning
forward, open
mouth, shaking
head, laughs
snidely;
then looks away
and down
Epilinguistic
ideational
arms mimic YLO’s
miming of fluffed
up rooster;
shakes head
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
223
leave the conference. YP1 accuses the YLO of having engineered his sis-
ter’s collapse and of enjoying the result, arming his proposal by nod-
ding his head up and down (Table5.17).
[ideation: YLO/attitude: happy]
YP1: Happy now?
YLO: Pardon?
YP1: Happy now?
Rejecting this bond the YLO replies that people have dierent sides to
them, with the implication that while YP1’s sister might see one persona,
his behaviour with his mates is another story. Both YPs withdraw proto-
linguistically from this accusation. YP2 has his arms and feet crossed,
slouching back, with his gaze to the ceiling and then down to the oor;
YP1 meanwhile lowers his head and slumps forward (Table5.18).
Table 5.16 YP1’s body language in response to YLO
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic [1] eye contact,
feet re-crossing,
half smile
[2] no eye contact,
gaze to floor,
feet uncrossing
leans back,
scratching back
of head with
left arm
[3] no eye contact,
gaze to floor
feet crossed full
smile slight
laugh
Epilinguistic
ideational
[1] hand on chin
(as if reflecting)
[2] -
[3] hand scratches
cheek
(dissolving
reflection)
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
224
[ideation: YP1 & YP2 behavior in family/attitude: not arrogant pride
(hubris)]
[ideation: YP1 & YP2 behavior with mates/attitude: arrogant pride (hubris)]
Table 5.17 YP1’s body language—‘Happy now?’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic leans forward in direction of YLO,
uncrossed feet, eye contact with
YLO, eyes wide
Linguistic
textual
head nod in sync with rhythm
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
nodding head
Table 5.18 YP1’s & YP2’s body language—rejecting YLO’s bond
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic YP2 arms/feet
crossed,
slouching back,
gaze to ceiling
then down to
floor;
YP1 leaning
forward, eye
contact then
head down,
slumping
forward
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
YP1 supine hands
before slumping
forward
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
225
YLO: Mate, I’ve been doing the job for 22years and there’s people that
have dierent sides to them. ere’s the side you portray to your
family, there’s the side you portray by yourself, and then when
you get together as a group, there’s another side that comes out
again.
YP2 sarcastically repeats the YLO’s accusation (a ued-up rooster) and
rejects that bond by proposing another one appreciating it as wrong (a
bad way to describe me).
[[ideation: YP2/attitude: arrogant pride (hubris)]/attitude: incorrect]]
YP2: A ued-up rooster.
<<…>> YP2: A bad way to describe me.
YP1’s reaction overlaps YP2’s, as he accuses the YLO himself of being
the ued-up rooster—leaning back again and pointing at the YLO with
his index nger as he does so (Table5.19). YP1’s bent arm as he points
and the fact that he tilts his head left to peek around his accusing nger
gesturally mitigates the coupling by indicating its irreverence.
[ideation: YLO behavior/attitude: arrogant pride (hubris)]
YP1: ==Yeah. Maybe you’re the ued-up rooster. (…)
Table 5.19 YP1’s body language—accusing YLO
Body language system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic leaning back, eye contact
with YLO, tilted head
looking round hand
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
bent arm for pointing
gesture
Epilinguistic textual pointing at YLO with index
finger
8 The Role ofBody Language inNegotiating Coupling: A‘Bond...
226
is degree of disrespect for authority is unique in our corpus, and has
no doubt been aorded in part by the YLO himself stepping out of line.
e YLO attempts to recover from this by commenting metalinguisti-
cally on what is going on, suggesting that he was not intending to insult
the YPs by proposing the ued-up rooster bond, but simply drawing an
analogy. In relation to this bond, YP2 contradicts the YLO verbally (‘You
slinged one’) while YP1 slouches back, with his hand on his chin as he
skeptically considers the retort and replies sarcastically ‘Yeah. I see. I see,
mate’ (Table5.20).
Table 5.20 YLO’s & YP1’s body language—‘Well, we’re not here to sling com-
ments at you’
Body language
system Description Screen capture
Protolinguistic YLO leans forward with elbows
resting on knees, eye contact
with YP1
YP1 slouching back, feet crossed
Linguistic YP1 nodding in sync with YLO
Epilinguistic
ideational
YP1 hand on chin (as if reflecting)
Epilinguistic
interpersonal
YLO hands supine
YP1 nodding
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
227
[ideation: YP1 & YP2 /attitude: not bad]
YLO: Well, we’re not here to sling comments at you.
YP2: You slinged one.==
YP1: ==(…)
YLO: It was an analogy– an analogy I drew– that’s all– to try and
portray what it looks like.
YP1: Yeah. I see. I see, mate.
In this section, we have highlighted the important role body language
plays in negotiating couplings of ideation and attitude as bonds. We now
turn to the question of bonds and communities.
9 Belonging andCommunity
As agged in Sect. 2, our interest with the ways in which couplings of
attitude and ideation are negotiated as bonds is based on Knight’s(2008,
2010, 2013) concern with the ways in which bonds enact membership in
one or another community. In order to explore this perspective on
belonging further, we need to consider what we mean by community.
Our work here draws upon Tann’s (2010b) research into identity and
membership categorization (to which we will return in Chap. 7 in order
to explore the ceremonial dimensions of the re-aliation practices sug-
gested here). Tann (2010a, 2013) borrows the concept of ‘Gemeinschaft’
from the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies who used it to refer to the kinds
of social associations, based on common geography and values, that form
in religious and kinship communities. Figure5.5 shows the three kinds
of Gemeinschaft that contribute to construing a ‘sense of belonging’
proposed by Tann (2010b, p.81): Categorization (classifying a persona as
being of a particular type, e.g. Muslim, Indigenous, feminist, disabled,
middle-class, generation X, etc.); Collectivization (setting up an opposi-
tion between a particular collectivity and an imagined or real other, e.g.
Australians vs refugees, loggers vs greenies, straight vs LGBT, etc.); and
Spatialization (classifying a type of persona based on place, e.g. Westies,
Yankees, Newes, Kiwis, etc.). Each type of Gemeinschaft is exemplied
from our data.
9 Belonging andCommunity
228
In the conferences, potential fellowships for the YP are named, and
the YP is instructed to move from one classication to another. As we
will see in the following examples, categorization and spatialization
work to identify this shift in classication that the YP is required to
make (from a transgressive to a reintegrated persona). Whereas catego-
rization and spatialization identify types of persona, collectivization
discourse on the other hand interpersonally enacts the memberships
required by the macro-genre and is frequently used by the Liaison
Ocers. e most frequently used collectivizing discourse that we will
explore in this section is the Liaison Ocers’ use of vocatives (e.g. mate,
man, brother), which are interpersonally inclusive rather than ideation-
ally categorizing and call upon the YP to adopt a particular
membership.
Tann’s concept of categorization was inspired by Membership
Categorization Analysis (MCA) (Scheglo 2007) and Sack’s concept of
‘membership categorization devices’, which holds that categories exist
as collections that consist of sets of corresponding roles (mother/child;
man/woman, etc.) as part of a particular society’s resources for inter-
preting talk (see e.g. Scheglo 2006; Sacks 1995). Tann (2010b) rein-
terprets this framework from the perspective of SFL by drawing on
Martin’s (1992) linguistic concept of taxonomic relations and his
approach to discourse analysis more generally (see Martin 1992; Martin
and Rose 2003/2007). Where MCA categories are posited as ‘infer-
ence-rich’, which means that each category is already associated with
certain attributes, activities and values, Tann addresses couplings of ide-
ational and interpersonal meaning (which we have used earlier in this
Fig. 5.5 Three kinds of Gemeinschaft (Adapted from Tann 2010b: 96)
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
229
chapter). Working along these lines Tann denes categories in terms of
entities coupled with events and attitudes at the level of discourse
semantics. e main dierence between the two approaches is the focus
of analysis. For MCA the main analytical unit appears to be the word,
while for Tann Categorization involves stretches of discourse (discourse
phases) that take into account all three metafunctions—interpersonal,
ideational and textual—in order to illuminate dierent dimensions of
the meanings being made.
Consider, for example, a phase of discourse where the Convenor in the
Aray YJC is warning the YP that his transgressive behaviour encourages
the wider community to categorize his ethnic community in negative ways:
Extract 5.9, Aray YJC
Convenor: Yep. So people’s perceptions, Aatif, that’s what Amir’s getting
at. Because the rest of us sitting around this table may have a
perception and you are holding that perception up. You are
allowing us to keep thinking that. Aren’t you? Because of your
behavior. Some people may think, ‘Well, Muslims are this’.
Just like they might think Asians are this or Australians are
this. But if you keep doing it and you keep behaving that way,
the people will think that way. Some people, won’t they?
e ECLO in the same conference, concerned with this bad image of
his ethnic community, categorizes himself as a member (shown in bold),
in order to invoke the moral authority to speak on its behalf:
Extract 5.10, Aray YJC
ECLO: What are they– when they see your mum wearing a scarf, I’m
Muslim background myself. What are they going to think?
Here, the ECLO’s specication of his ethnic background, together
with a prosody of negative judgement of behaviours that go against the
notion of a ‘good Muslim’ and a textual pattern featuring repetition of
9 Belonging andCommunity
230
rhetorical questions (e.g. ‘You show me where in the Koran it says we can
do things like that’) all contribute to the construal of a Categorization
device that aims at aligning the ECLO and the YP in terms of ethnic
community.
At times, Categorization sets up tensions as far as negotiating the
appropriate membership in YJCs is concerned. For example, the YP in
the extract from the following Aray YJC identies himself as the Victim
when positioned to nominate himself as the Oender during the Mandate
(see Extract 5.11). is is likely because his oence involved another
Oender who had an altercation with the YP.When the YP went to ‘back
up’ his mate at a ght he traded punches with this other oender and
started chasing him. e other oender pulled a knife out and the YP
took evasive action, which included throwing bricks at him across a street.
What happened subsequently was that both YPs were charged by the
police and both referred to a conference. ey were invited to attend the
same conference—where both of them would have been present as
Oenders. However, the second YP withdrew from the conference on the
advice of a lawyer. e YP who did attend the conference, however, obvi-
ously still bore ill feelings towards the YP with whom he had had this
skirmish and, in his own common-sense way of explaining things, felt
that he was as much a Victim as a perpetrator:
Extract 5.11, Aray YJC
Convenor: What we are going to do is go quickly around the table and
introduce ourselves and say what our respective roles are in the
conference.
…[translation into Arabic for Mother]
Convenor: anks, Translator. OK, my name is Jude and I’m the
Convenor. Aatif?
YP: My name’s Aatif.
Convenor: And you are the?
YP: e Victim.
Convenor: No, you’re the Oender.
YP: Oh, OK.
Convenor: Yep.
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
231
In addition to Categorization devices, dierent kinds of personae were
also classied in the conferences though Spatialization devices. We can
see this in the episode discussed earlier in this chapter where YP1in the
School Library YJC reacts to the Convenor’s suggestion that his snicker-
ing shows he is not taking the conference seriously:
Extract 5.12, School Library YJC
YP1: (…) Yeah well I’m not a rat from Bridgeton.
Convenor: W– I know that.
YP1: I’m not one of those friggin’ retarded people that just say ‘oh
yeah I done that. I w- I’ll do it again’. … I’ll do everything that
I can to change everything that’s happened. Seriously. Walk
the streets, mate. Go have fun. Go get drunk. Do whatever.
Party on. (…)
In this extract, the YP uses a Spatialization device to dispel the implica-
tion that he’s ‘a rat’ associated with a particular place (shown in bold),
using a phrase presumably common when complaining about the nega-
tive behaviour of this type of persona. Another example where
Spatialization is deployed is when the ECLO in the Aray YJC (during a
phase of the conference where he attempts to shame the YP for bringing
his mother into the presence of police) refers to our presence as research-
ers documenting the conference by indicating that we have come there
from another place (the university):
Extract 5.13, Aray YJC
ECLO: OK. Where are these guys from? ey’re from a certain place.
OK.What’s the perception going to be?
YP: ink bad of me.
e spatial references to these outsiders to the community (police,
researchers, etc.) are used pedagogically by the ECLO to show the YP
that his behaviour will result in a membership classication (‘the percep-
tion’) amongst these outsiders that negatively appraises his community.
9 Belonging andCommunity
232
While Categorization and Spatialization devices classify the kind of
persona involved in the liminal shift in identity the conference is working
towards, Collectivization devices play an important role in conferences of
inviting the YP back into their communities of concern. Collectivization
devices, according to Tann’s model, are relational concepts that contrast
an identity with a perceived other (e.g. Victim vs Oender). Consider,
for example, the distinction between ‘us’ as law-abiding citizens (shown
in bold) and an implied criminal other:
Extract 5.14, Mobile Phone YJC
Convenor: So, what I want you to remember is that every single one of us
in this room could be considered a victim of a crime.
is example illustrates a frequent pattern in conferencing whereby
the Convenor attempts to invoke a collective sense of belonging to an
imagined community of ethical citizens into which the YP needs to be
realigned. is device, supported by coupling of the YP persona with
negative judgement of their behaviour (contrasted with an imagined
Victim persona associated with ethical behaviour), is often deployed
when there is no tangible ‘Victim’ of the crime or particular sub-
community who has been harmed, sometimes referred to as ‘victimless
crimes’ (e.g. stealing from a supermarket). We will return to further
explore the nature of this imagined community in the next chapter.
Because we are focusing on reintegration, Collectivization phases are
the most important for our discussion. Having established Tann’s focus,
we will now examine how interactive Collectivization resources are
used to negotiate the borders of communities into which the YP might
be reintegrated. We are asking how the YP is being positioned to realign
himself or herself with particular communities framed in certain ways.
Our concern here is mainly with the naming of collectivities (working
in tandem with other resources) used as part of the transformative rhet-
oric of the conference. e signicance of Collectivization is, in fact,
agged in the Convenor-training guidelines, which instruct the
Convenors to avoid referring to the YP as an ‘oender’—for fear of
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
233
labelling the YP as a deviant and aligning him or her with an imagined
community of ‘criminals’. Instead the YP is named as the more neutral,
‘Young Person’, an identity open to being re-aliated with the right
kinds of associates.
Within our sample, it is in the interaction of the YP with the Liaison
Ocers that Collectivization devices play the most pronounced role in
negotiating realignment. For example, the ECLO draws heavily on
Collectivization devices (shown in bold in the following example) to sug-
gest that the YP has contravened the social boundaries of their shared
ethnic community:
Extract 5.15, Aray YJC
ECLO: You have no respect for your mum whatsoever, brother. You
have no respect for what your mum’s got on her head. You
have no respect for our community. You have no respect. You
tell me, brother, how it’s a part of our culture or our religion
or our tradition to do things like that. You tell me when.
Critical in many of these interactions between YPs and Liaison
Ocers is what we might think of as ‘inviting/warning’ Collectivization.
In other words, these interactions involve Collectivizations that suggest
that the YP can align himself or herself with a particular community or
‘lose out’. ese resources invite the YP to commune and negotiate the
borders of positively valued communities, while at the same time warn-
ing the YP of the consequences of failing to re-aliate. An important
resource contributing to this kind of inviting/warning Collectivization
is the use of vocatives directed at the YP.Our analysis of vocatives draws
on the work on Poynton (1990a, b) who addresses the way in which
their usage is sensitive to and constructive of gender, ethnicity, genera-
tion and social class. Our interpretation of vocation in the following
extracts is based on our reading of the Australian variables in play in the
conference on hand.
ree kinds of vocatives were seen in our sample of Liaison Ocer–YP
interaction, which we interpret as contributing to the enactment of three
9 Belonging andCommunity
234
kinds of collectivization: generational (e.g. ‘man’), ethnic (e.g. ‘brother’)
and gendered (e.g. ‘mate’). e following extract shows examples of voca-
tives such as these in bold:
Extract 5.16, Aray YJC
ECLO: at’s what I’m saying to you, man. I say– I’m talking to you
man, look at me as your older brother. Do you understand
what I’m saying to you?
YP: Yeah.
Note that most of the vocatives in our sample that occurred beyond
Mandate (in which participants are being identied for the rst time in
the conference) were not used because there was ambiguity in the
exchange regarding the identity of the next speaker. Rather they func-
tioned to establish a specic relationship with the addressee; they func-
tioned as collectivization devices, not simply as turn-assigning address.
When used in this way by the YLO, the vocatives occurred in the ini-
tial, medial and nal positions in the clause, as shown in Extract 5.16. In
contrast, when used by the Convenor, vocatives tended to be both a
proper name and in initial position:
Extract 5.17, Aray YJC
Convenor: OK, Aatif, one of the conditions of a juvenile conference is
that you admit to the oence in front of all of us here today
and that you tell us that you are here of your own free will. So
did you commit the oences you were charged with?
Poynton notes, working with a corpus of written Australian texts, that
in adult conversation a vocative is most likely to occur in the nal posi-
tion in a clause, whereas in adult to child talk it is more likely to occur in
the initial position (Poynton 1990a). e greater tendency towards initial
position usage of a proper name vocative is suggestive of a greater power
distance between the Convenor and the YP.is relates in part to the
Convenor’s role of managing who is to speak and when, and to the con-
trol the Convenor has over the exchange structure (see Chap. 3).
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
235
While collectivizing vocatives were frequently used by the Liaison
Ocers in our sample, they were never used by the Convenors or the YPs
themselves. A possible reason for their proliferation in the discourse of
the Liaison Ocers is the special role that these ocers play in the pro-
cess of re-aliating the YP during and potentially after the conference—
hence the concern they show in the Caution with the YP’s future identity
as a law-abiding citizen (which we explored earlier in this chapter) and
with de-aliating them from their ‘mates’. ese conference participants
tend to favour vocatives of ‘solidarity’ (Poynton 1990b: 212) acting as
forms of ‘in-group address’ (Brown and Levinson 1978). As we will see,
these vocatives align the interactants with dierent kinds of communi-
ties. ‘Mate’, ‘man’ and ‘brother’ (enacting in turn what we interpret as the
gendered, generational and ethnic collectivities mentioned earlier) were
particularly common in the discourse of the ECLO in the Aray YJC
(shown in Tables 5.21, 5.22 and 5.23).
Before we turn to consider the kinds of communities being referenced,
let us rst reect on the regulative function of these vocatives. ese voc-
atives work in the service of the macro-genre in the sense that they relate
to the overall concern for ‘warning’ the YP that they have adopted the
wrong kind of aliation (e.g. with mates who are a bad inuence). In
other words, they have a dual function of both the inviting and warning
Collectivizations mentioned earlier. For example, in many instances of
Table 5.21 Examples of ‘mate’ in initial position with Tone 3
Mate, you’ve got to understand what you do doesn’t just affect you,
doesn’t just affect your mum, it affects the whole community,
it affects the perception, it affects our culture, it affects
everything
Mate, First of all when I talk to you, man, I’m not talking to you so
you can be my friend
Mate, Ya- your mate didn’t have to go down there did he?
So, Mate, In here I think there’s nothing
Mate, If you- if there’s a fire do you walk straight into it or do you
walk around it?
Mate, You’ve gotta understand brother, what- what everyone’s trying
to do here is…
And, Mate, Police can defend themselves
9 Belonging andCommunity
236
the ECLO’s interaction with the YP in the Aray YJC, vocatives func-
tioned to issue a warning at the same time as construing camaraderie:
Extract 5.18, Aray YJC
ECLO: Mate, you’ve got to understand what you do doesn’t just aect
you, doesn’t just aect your mum, it aects the whole com-
munity, it aects the perception, it aects our culture, it aects
everything.
Table 5.22 Instances of the use of ‘man’ by ECLO
Because I’m listening to you, man and I don’t see you as a
leader
You tell me- you tell me if I’m speaking- if
my English is too hard for you
man, I’ll go down a couple of
steps [sarcastic tone]
I’ve got three kids, man.
I honestly don’t think you do, man.
That’s what I’m saying to ya, man.
I’m talking to you man, Look at me as your older
brother
I’m thirty six, man.
Be upfront, man.
What we’re saying is your behavior is
getting you into trouble,
man.
Look at your mum, man.
Table 5.23 Examples of the use of ‘brother’ by the ECLO
I’m telling you, brother, you don’t respect your mum
You have no respect for your
mum whatsoever,
brother.
You tell me, brother, how it’s a part of our culture or
our religion or our tradition to
do things like that?
Why aren’t they with you,
supporting you,
brother?
How many times- how old are
you now,
brother?
After it’s too late, brother.
We’re not targetting you
personally,
brother.
You’re hurting your family, brother.
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
237
In this example, ‘Mate’ contributes to a collectivization phase
designed to motivate the YP to accept the coupling of his oending
behaviour with negative judgement. In other words, the ECLO is
eectively saying ‘if we are mates, then you agree that what you are
doing is wrong’.
Further examples of this kind of pattern are shown in Table5.21
where ‘mate’ is realized with an intonation pattern that typically indi-
cates a warning (tone 3in Halliday and Greaves (2008)). e ECLO’s
usage seems quite marked since, although vocatives can occupy the ini-
tial position in a clause as a single tone group, it is usually done with a
less threatening tone (tone 1, with the pitch movement going down
generally indicating a statement, or tone 2, with the pitch movement
rising indicating a question (Halliday 1967: 47)). It is part of an ongo-
ing prosody of warning that occurs at the end of the commissioned
recount in the Aray YJC.is kind of patterning was less apparent
with the other YLOs in our sample, although there were examples such
as the following (in the intonation analysis ‘//’ marks a tone group
boundary, ‘/’ a foot boundary and ‘Δ’ a silent beat; see Appendix B for
details):
YLO: //3 Δ A/tif//1 Δ he’s not/joking/when he/says you’ll/ go
to/gaol. //
We can also think of ‘mate’ as construing a gendered in-group of
Australian men. In Australian spoken discourse, ‘mate’ is most commonly
used among males:
In Australia, one nds the considerably less formal mate used between
males in many kinds of service encounter, especially when the transaction
involves a ‘male’ product such as petrol, auto parts, hardware, paint, and
particularly alcohol (either in the bar or the bottle-shop). Mate is also used
in more neutral contexts such as post oces, milk bars or delis and the
local paper shop. Such public male usage is often reciprocal and is best seen
as a conventionalized marker of Australian egalitarian ideology, which his-
torically has been constructed as exclusively male (Ward 1958). (Poynton
1990b: 241)
9 Belonging andCommunity
238
However, the gendered nature of this vocative may have dissipated some-
what since Poynton’s study in the 1980s (Formentelli 2007); in fact, the
other participant who used ‘mate’ most frequently was the young female
YLO in the Shopping Trolley YJC:
Extract 5.19, Shopping Trolley YJC
YLO: You get contacts, get to know people, get some numbers, go
and work for, you know you could– if (…) been a butcher,
you could end up overseas mate and work …
YLO: When you turn eighteen, if you get something small like this
on your record, that’s there forever mate.
‘Man’ appears to be associated with a more generational aliation,
invoking the sense that the YP and Liaison Ocers are both of the same
generation; as the ECLO explicitly states, the YP can think of him as an
‘older brother’ (Table5.22, example 6).
e vocative ‘brother’ is used by the ECLO to mark the YP and ECLO
as members of the same ethnic community (Table5.23). is vocative is
part of the Collectivization device drawn on by the ECLO in various
phases in the conference, particularly during the extension of the com-
missioned recount. e collectivization is marked by the use of the pro-
noun ‘we’ in the thematic position and a prosody of negative judgement
(both invoked and inscribed) about activities and stances contravening
what it means to be a good Muslim (e.g. ‘do things like that’, ‘no respect
for your mum’, etc.).
Extract 5.20, Aray YJC
ECLO: You show me where in the Koran it says we can do things like
that.
is phase of discourse also includes explicit reference to the collectivi-
ties (‘our culture’, ‘our religion’, ‘our tradition’) who hold particular value
orientations:
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
239
Extract 5.21, Aray YJC
ECLO: What are you doing- you tell me what you’re doing does that
help our community at the moment or does it make our com-
munity look worse?
YP: Looks worse.
ECLO: It does, doesn’t it.
YP: Yes.
ECLO: What are you going to do to x that image because, you know
what, brother, I’m going to tell you straight out, I get sick and
tired, man, of people like you, OK, that put down our commu-
nity, put down our religion, put down the Hijab, it makes me
sick. I’ve got three kids, man. I want to make sure that when my
kids grow up they have it good.
By using the vocatives ‘man’, ‘brother’ and ‘mate’ the ECLO invokes
the authority to speak as a ‘young Muslim male’ (collectivized via genera-
tion, ethnicity, gender). e tone 3 warning recurrently coupled with
these vocatives functions to ‘caution’ the YP that he is transgressing the
boundaries of the community of young Muslim males. However, these
vocatives do not function alone to enact or negotiate membership of par-
ticular communities but contribute to phases of discourse construing the
kinds of collectivities that have been touched upon here. For instance, the
patterns of appraisal that we see in phases of discourse where the voca-
tives occur begin to give us a picture of the axiological loading of these
subject positions (which we will explore in the next chapter). For instance,
in the following phase, the ECLO draws on a syndrome of features (voc-
atives, familial taxonomic relations and negative judgement) to make
explicit to the YP how his behaviour is de-aligning him from the collec-
tivity which he should be embracing:
Extract 5.22, Aray YJC
ECLO: But you– don’t you have anything in your head? You’ve got a
younger brother, man, and a sister. If you’re disrespecting
your family like that, that means you’re saying to me and
9 Belonging andCommunity
240
everybody here we can disrespect your mother. at’s what
you’re doing. Because you have no respect for your mother.
You only thought after you were locked up not before you got
locked up. Maybe you’ve got to start thinking before not after.
After it’s too late, brother. It’s too late.
is section has shown how the YP is prompted to make a shift in
classication as part of the rhetoric of reintegration enacted by the
YJC macro-genre. is recategorizing involves Categorization and
Spatialization devices that classify the kinds of personae available to
the YP, and Collectivization devices that invite the YP back into par-
ticular positively valued memberships. We have seen the special role
that vocatives play in this collectivizing over other potential resources
such as pronouns (e.g. we). e main membership that might be
expressed in a collectivized way for the YP would be their transgres-
sive ‘mates’ and it is this membership that the Liaison Ocers are
trying to disintegrate.
10 Conclusion
e focus of this chapter has been the relation of feelings to the commu-
nity. Inspired by Knight(2008, 2010, 2013), we have explored the idea
that belonging involves enacting bonds, with a bond dened as a shared
‘attitude plus ideation’ coupling. is means that looking at how cou-
plings are negotiated as bonds is crucial for understanding the reintegra-
tive practice of conferencing. Accordingly, we looked carefully at the
interaction of language and body language as far as negotiating bonds
was concerned. is in turn raises the question of how to address the
communities engendered by these bonding processes. For this we turned
to the work of Tann, illustrating the operation of Categorization,
Collectivization and Spatialization devices in conferencing, and attend-
ing to the use of vocatives to ag relevant communities of feeling.
As we have seen, however, YPs may be less than forthcoming as far as
reintegration is concerned, and occasionally resistant. In the next chapter,
we consider the negotiation of identity in conferencing in more detail,
5 Negotiating Feeling: TheRole ofBody Language
241
developing models of the dierent kinds of belonging in play—for both
ideal and less ideal YPs and Support Persons.
Notes
1. e attitude in this example is classied as hybrid since ‘disappointed’
inscribes both aect and judgement—the father is sad (aect) about what
the YP did wrong (judgement).
2. For examples in which the attitude is invoked rather than inscribed, we
have made explicit the kind of feeling involved in the coupling.
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