Volume 12, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Sound and meaning: sound semiotics across contexts; Guest Editors: Y. J. Doran, Thu Ngo and Lilian I. Ariztimuño

This paper argues for a multimodal ‘phonology’, a ‘phonology’ which returns to the original meaning of the word ‘phone’ as referring to ‘voice’ as well as ‘sound’ in general, and which can be applied to speech, music, as well as other sounds. Three areas are discussed. The first is rhythm. Systemic functional linguistics has reduced the role of rhythm to the ‘foot’, but others see rhythm as also playing a significant role at higher ranks and as the fundamental organising principle of all time-based multimodal texts. The second is voice quality or, more generally, sound quality, as a key resource for expressing identity as well as fleeting states and emotions. Based as it is on qualities common to all sounds, this too applies to all sound-based semiotic modes. The third is the meaning-making potential of pitch contours, which, the paper argues, primarily contribute to the communication of emotion – again in speech, music, as well as other sounds.

Emotion in spoken communication is conveyed through a combination of verbal, vocal and facial resources among others. This paper adopts a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective to explore the sounding potential of English to realise affectual meanings in storytelling performances. It presents a novel exploratory system network of non-segmental vocal qualities considered meaningful for the description of the phonological realisation of affectual meanings. This system of vocal qualities models semogenic vocal options using the tone unit as its root entry condition to show how the features selected by storytellers work together as contrastive bundles for the expression of affectual meanings in a corpus of eight storytelling performances of Cinderella. The results show the association between emotional meanings identified discourse semantically in terms of categories of affect and the phonological choices from the vocal qualities system interpreted as affectual vocal profiles. This paper also explores the need to include phonological descriptions in research dealing with emotion in spoken communication in inter-stratal relations between attitudinally uncharged lexicogrammatical choices and affectual vocal qualities in the Reaction phases of the storytelling performances. The paper finishes by proposing a provisional system network for inscription and invocation resources for affect in spoken language.

This paper draws on principles of sound semiotics and parameters of voice quality to examine the vocal sounds of an Australian Rules footballer who ‘calls for the ball’ from their teammates in the ‘live’ action of a sporting contest. The paper will begin by locating this study in the emerging field of sports linguistics, including recent research which shows how language-in-action in sport ‘breaks down’ typical clause, grammatical and phonological structures to foreground the meaning making of voice quality. Having introduced the data set (ten instances of ‘calling for the ball’, by the same player, from the same game) the paper draws on perceptual analyses (supported by acoustic analysis) to characterise the player’s voice according to its most salient voice quality parameters: loudness, speed and tension. The paper then turns to the data set itself to further identify two distinct voice quality patterns, coined as experiential gestures: ‘grabbing’ and ‘tapping’. The paper concludes by flagging several areas of future research that emerged from the study, including the role of on-field sporting action vis-à-vis voice quality; the co-articulation of lexis and voice quality; and the materiality of voice quality and its intersubjective function.

The impersonation of a character’s voice is a canonical resource in comedic parody, allowing comedians to impersonate characters and establish a plurality of perspectives with varying degrees of alignment to the audience’s collective values. Although phenomena such as mimicry and ventriloquism are often mentioned anecdotally, this area remains underexplored within phonology, despite being occasionally addressed in studies of impersonation from other disciplines. This study presents a social semiotic analysis of how features of a comedian’s vocal sound semiotics including phonology and voice quality intersect with impersonation and humour in a stand-up comedy text. Employing a systemic functional linguistics-based paralanguage framework, we characterize impersonation as a mechanism realized by the convergence of particular features across semiotic modes, with phonology playing a central role renovated Tenor model is then applied to describe how meanings realized by the comedian are negotiated with the audience to create humour. The findings indicate that vocal sound semiotics plays a crucial role in nuancing the negotiation of meanings with stand-up comedy audiences, affording the comedian a rich resource for creating humour. Specifically, the comedian alternates between a “harsher” voice quality, associated with an impersonated persona, for building humorous tension, and a “warmer” voice quality associated with a more “authentic” authorial persona so as to diffuse this tension; they thus calibrate tension to remain humorous and sustain solidarity and rapport with the audience.

This paper draws on an emerging perspective in Systemic Functional Semiotics on the role of contextual resources in organising language and semiosis. Here we look specifically to resources of mode as they resonate with resources for textual meaning-making in language. Therein we foreground a particular contextual system called juncture. This system concerns the potential to mean through demarcating information into coherent chunks of information. To explore the role of sound in demarcation, we focus especially on resources which we call punctuatives , described in this paper as relatively short, sharp, transient sounds which fall outside standard phonemic models of English. We include both non-pulmonic vocal sounds such as clicks and percussives, embodied beat gestures contacting various kinds of surface, and slightly less transitory sounds such as whistles. These resources reflect the diversity of contexts explored, which include storytelling, classroom discourse and sports coaching. Although the precise sonic resources vary between these contexts, we are able to show that the way the resources are used is relatively stable. Punctuatives are frequently found to co-occur with other semiotic resources which function to organise and chunk segments of spoken text.

This paper focuses on vocalisations in the microlanguage of a man with a severe intellectual disability named Bodhi, who is functionally nonverbal. To make meaning, Bodhi deploys a variety of modes of expression, including non-speech vocalisations. These have received little attention, other than looking at his use of intonation. In this paper we begin to explore how his vocalisations contribute to meaning and how we might map the meaning making variations occurring in his vocalisations. We build on Dreyfus’ model of nonverbal communication and Ariztimuño’s system of vocal features to show the contributions of sound to Bodhi’s microlanguage. Dreyfus’ model focuses on Bodhi’s self-initiated system of exchanges, which privileges the interpersonal as the key driver of his communication. The main vocal qualities Bodhi uses to make his meanings relate to pitch height, loudness, tempo and tension. The paper will explore how the tendencies of association between these vocal qualities and meanings can provide further tools of interpretation for his communication partners. As such, this paper will set the foundations to enhance the understanding of Bodhi’s spoken communication and potentially act as an example of how to explore the spoken communication of others who rely on nonverbal communication and thus, hopefully, improve the quality of their interactions.

This paper presents a metalanguage for teachers to teach about the functions of music and sound effects in fictional media and how it contributes to the understanding of film plot. This is part of a larger study from a Systemic Functional Semiotics (SFS) perspective examining the potential of sound in constructing key literary elements such as character, plot, setting and broader literary and cinematic effects. The metalanguage is developed by conceptualising three metafunctions of cinematic sounds (i.e. ideational, interpersonal, and textual) based on the analysis of the film data selected for this study. This paper starts with inventorising observable sounds we can hear in the films, followed by a description of sound qualities as the “signifier” and their meaning potential as the “signified”. It provides evidence that in terms of plot construction, cinematic sounds can represent a narrative story arc, realise events and properties of events. The metalanguage as well as the modelling of the metafunctions of film sound in the current study also provides multimodality researchers with a tool to analyse multimodal texts where sound is a key component such as films, video clips, video games, and other forms of multimodal digital texts.

This paper critically examines the importation of concepts and tools from the field of music theory into interdisciplinary research that investigates music and meaning. Within the field of music theory, one type of music theory – Western classical music theory – holds institutional dominance to the extent that the term “music theory” has become synonymous with this specific type of theory, even though it has been demonstrated to be highly incompatible with non-Western musical practices as well as many genres of popular music. This paper examines the biases and blind spots of Western classical music theory that carry over into research in music semiotics and related interdisciplinary fields such as music psychology, critically reflecting on the limitations these biases and blind spots impose on investigations into music and meaning. An eclectic range of alternative discourses on musical knowledge (e.g. from theoretical texts on non-Western and non-classical musical practices) are also explored and insights from these alternative music theories are collated in order to synthesise practical considerations that allow for broader (and less ethnocentric) perspectives to be applied in future research on music and meaning, with a particular emphasis on considerations for multimodal semiotic studies of music in contemporary global media practices.