THE INTERACTION OF LANGUAGE AND PARALANGUAGE UNVEILING NEW
MEANINGS FOR NEW READERS
Terezinha M. F. Benevides Lobianco
Universidade Federal Fluminense
Resumo: Este trabalho explora os novos significados que, no mundo atual, os leitores estão expostos
ao lidar com uma página extremamente diversificada. A pesquisa examina os efeitos que a interação
entre linguagem e para-linguagem têm na compreensão de textos escritos. Aspectos textuais que
possam prejudicar o entendimento da mensagem pelo leitor são o foco da investigação. Embora
estudos sobre leitura e compreensão tenham, tradicionalmente, concentrado-se na linguagem de textos
escritos, muitos destes textos também contam com elementos para-lingüísticos para comunicar suas
intenções, além de complementarem, ilustrarem, organizarem ou tornarem mais claros seus
conteúdos. Portanto, é fundamental que um estudo que investigue obstáculos para o processo de
leitura e compreensão aborde a complexa rede de significados para-lingüísticos presentes, não apenas
em textos produzidos para a sala de aula, como também aqueles que são essenciais para a
comunicação global. Um corpus de 126 textos foi montado com o propósito de fornecer o material
para investigação. Seus textos foram analisados e várias combinações de elementos lingüísticos e
para-linguísticos foram observadas. Protocolos verbais e entrevistas foram usados como mecanismos
de acesso aos processos de leitura e interpretação. Tal análise tem como objetivo detectar fatores que
causem problemas para uma compreensão eficiente.
Palavras-chaves: textos escritos, interpretação, linguagem, para-linguagem
Abstract: This research explores the new meanings that readers are faced with nowadays when
dealing with an extremely diversified written page. It investigates the effect of the interplay of
paralanguage and language on the accessibility of written texts. It examines textual factors that may
hinder the reader´s understanding of the message. Although studies of reading comprehension have
traditionally concentrated on the language of texts, many written texts also rely on paralinguistic
features to convey their messages, and to complement, illustrate, clarify and organise their content.
Hence, it is paramount that a study investigating obstacles for reading comprehension be able to
account for the complex web of paralinguistic devices, not only present in every language classroom
but also essential for communication in the world today. A corpus of 126 written texts was composed
for the purpose of the study. These texts were analysed and several combinations of linguistic and
paralinguistic features were examined. Verbal protocols and interviews were used to gain access to
readers´ interpretative processes when dealing with texts from the corpus. They aimed to evince
accessibility problems.
Key-words: written texts, comprehension, language, paralanguage
Introduction
The paralinguistic elements of written texts have in the past been somehow largely
overlooked and their role for the reading process not given much consideration. It may be a
fact that some discourse types depend much more on linguistic factors than on paralinguistic
ones. The reader of a novel or legal documents, for example, is usually concerned about their
content, while their writer is usually concerned about the linguistic structure. Conversely,
other text types rely on paralinguistic features to communicate their message more
effectively, such as science textbooks.
This study observes not only how the paralinguistic elements found in written texts may
influence the reader's perception of the page and its various signalling systems, but also how
they may affect the comprehension of the message when interacting with language
(Benevides Lobianco, 1999, 2005).
Discussing Language and Paralanguage
Communication never consists of using only linguistic structures to express one’s ideas.
If words and sentences were eliminated, communication would still show a level of
unsuspected richness (Miller 1990:113). Meanings are also conveyed through the intonation
used when uttering a sentence or through a specific choice of typeface to write the message
with, for instance.
The language used to convey the message is always accompanied by paralinguistic
features that add meaning to it. In spoken communication, there are several mechanisms
playing a role in the participants’ exchange which may not often be consciously perceived as
part of the meaning that they intend to convey in their message. These mechanisms of
conveying meaning may encompass, among several others, the stress in a particular word, the
distance between the participants, or even a smile or a yawn expressed while uttering a
sentence. All these mechanisms are part of a net of meaningful channels that may influence
the communication situation. Most of them are culturally determined (Saville-Troike 1989).
Their use is linked to the rules of appropriacy which are specific of a particular linguistic
community.
Besides, facts such left-to-right or right-to-left writing orientation, for example, may
influence the reading of visual texts (Kress and van Leeuwen. 1996).
Distinct text types use language and paralanguage according to the purposes and
conventions of the genre they subscribe to. In this study, emergency procedures were chosen
to be the tools for the observation of actual occurrences of paralinguistic features in
interaction with linguistic constructs. This text type provides a rich source of linguistic and
paralinguistic structures.
The Construction of Meaning
This part of the discussion considers a field of study that observes how any system of
signs - verbal, visual, or both - organise and produce meaning: semiotics.
The sign is defined by Saussure (1959) as the combination of a concept and a soundimage. The ‘linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image'
(p.66). In his theory, for the 'concept' he uses the term signified (signifié) and for the 'soundimage', the term signifier (signifiant). He recognises the sign as the result of the arbitrary
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association of the signifier with the signified. What he means by arbitrary is, in fact, an
unmotivated (or with ‘no natural connection’, as he puts it) connection between the signified
and the signifier. Saussure (1959) distinguishes between unmotivated and motivated signs.
He exemplifies the motivated non-arbitrary signifier through onomatopoeia or the case of
interjections. Another case of motivated signs can be exemplified by the sequence of events
that compose a story, i.e., the order that the sentences used to tell the story appear corresponds
to the actual chronological sequence of events contained in it (Leech and Short 1981).
The sequence of presentation of procedures in emergency texts is also extremely
important, because it can affect how effectively the actions prompted by the text are executed.
The order that the commands are presented may be crucial to achieve the hoped success in
aiding a casualty. In addition, if pictures are used in parallel to complement the verbal text,
they too should follow the sequence of commands prompted in the written copy.
There are cases when two arbitrary signs joined together may form a non-arbitrary one,
as in 'blackbird', for instance. This case is referred to as secondary motivation.
Extending this Saussurean principle, it may be possible to suggest the existence of a third type
of motivated sign, which lies between the two types described above. This is the case of a
warning sign containing the signifier 'ATTENTION'.
The word 'attention' is usually employed in order to draw the reader's awareness to a
particular subject matter. When presented in big bold type capital letters its function is
maximised aiming to attract the observer’s eyes to its message. A similar effect of directing
the reader's observation to a particular signifier can be conveyed by any oversized word that
features in a text among several others (written in smaller typeface) that compose the layout
of a page, as in the case of newspapers headlines, titles on articles, and so forth.
Not only the word 'attention' is to be taken into account, but also the background colour
that accompanies it. The colour red used in the background is also a tool to attract the
observer's attention. It corresponds to its communicative purpose, thus implying that the
warning sign composes a type of motivated semiotic sign.
Kress (1993) goes even further stating that ‘the relation of signifier to signified, in all
human semiotic systems, is always motivated, and is never arbitrary’ (p.173).
Kress
(1993:1972) believes the sign to be always motivated by the producer’s ‘interest’ (Kress’s
term) in the object and by features of the object to be represented..
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Relational Axes
The meaning of any word is determined by its environment and, without first
considering its surroundings, it is not possible to determine its value. The syntagmatic relation
among signs dictates that the meaning will be created from the selection of each sign in
relation to the one that comes before and after it. The paradigmatic axis, on the other hand,
will contain all the possible items that may suit one slot.
While linguistic texts are processed linearly, this principle does not apply to nonlinguistic occurrences such as pictures, which can have several aspects being perceived
simultaneously.
Pictorial representations, such as photographs, contain more than the
occurrence of discrete signs. When particular elements are chosen to compose a picture, this
does not imply that these will communicate only the meanings desired by the photographer in
a one-to-one relation.
In emergency procedures, the selection from the paradigmatic axis is motivated by
clarity and effectiveness in portraying the summary of a whole situation in one scene. A
picture usually depicts a part of the body to be treated by ‘you’, the reader, or it may represent
the reader performing some action. The syntagmatic arrangement of signs is usually based on
‘seriousness’ and a certain ‘pleasantness’, so that a reader under stress is not led to despair by
realistic portrayals of actual emergency situations.
Their communicative choices are
determined not only by accessibility but also by acceptability (Widdowson 1978, 1990).
Paralinguistic Simultaneity
There are cases when language and paralanguage or two paralinguistic signs are used
simultaneously. In fact, different paralinguistic elements can not only occupy a same slot but
also convey more than one meaning at once.
The co-occurrence of paralinguistic features and written language may be exemplified
through the use of bold type letters or italics, for instance. The precise meaning of a signifier
that features in bold type letters or italics shall be elicited from its context of occurrence.
Usually, the meaning they add can be translated into 'this is an important term', or 'this term is
being used with a figurative meaning', 'this term is a neologism', 'this is jargon', 'this whole
sentence is a quotation from another author', among a number of other possible alternatives.
Contrarily to language, pictures may convey two or more signs in a same slot at once.
This simultaneity aspect found in non-linguistic devices, such as photographs, may be
regarded as an economical way of expressing complex ideas.
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The Meanings of a Sign
Pictorial messages may contain more than a combination of discrete signs (Ellis and
Beattie 1986; Cook 1992). When looking at a picture of a boy, an observer may see more
than the signified boy which the arbitrary signifier 'boy' refers to.
A single sign will involve a semantic, a syntactic and a pragmatic interplay of meanings
(Holbrook 1987). A photograph depicting a person wearing a blue and white shirt, for
instance, may communicate, from the semantic perspective, a set of cultural values, which are
related to particular attributes that may be linked, for instance, to the type of fabric that the
shirt is made of.
From the syntactic perspective, the same blue and white shirt may convey the message
of a socially suitable, decent, well-matching piece of clothing to complement the other articles
that are being worn by the person. This view point differs from the pragmatic one in so far as,
in this case, the selection of a particular item (the blue and white shirt) may convey a
particular meaning to a certain reference group, such as a signifier expressing membership to
a football team.
Denotative and connotative meanings
Non-linguistic features can change the appearance or form of a word and, consequently,
attribute different aspects to the “basic” intrinsic meaning of a signifier. That means to say
that paralinguistic devices may add a new connotation to the denotative meaning of a word
(Rowe, 1982). The word ‘table’ may denote an object with four legs used to eat or write
upon, but if its shape changes as in 1, it may affect the reader’s perception of it in different
ways.
table
T A BLE
tab le
table
Figure 1: Different Shapes of a Same Word
The different formats may add to the signifier ‘table’ varied connotations, whose
interpretation may depend on their context of occurrence and on the target audience.
Not only the typeface used to write the text with may carry an extra meaning or
connotation, but the linguistic and other paralinguistic resources (e.g. pictures) may also
convey implicit meanings to the reader. Barthes (1972) suggests that a signifier on its own is
empty; it is only when it is associated with a particular signified that it becomes a sign. The
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reader, however, has to be able to attribute the appropriate meaning and value to the sign in
order to interpret it successfully.
A Case Study
A study carried out by Benevides Lobianco (1999) explores several combinations of
elements from verbal and non-verbal structures interacting on a written page. This section,
however, presents part of the material and method used in the case study to examine the
interaction of language and paralanguage in emergency procedures.
The Methodology
After selecting a particular text type and a specific grouping of linguistic and
paralinguistic structures to be observed, a method of investigation was chosen: a combination
of verbal protocols and interviews.
Verbal protocols compose the main tool to get access to readers’ interpretation of
emergency texts. The material used here is not composed of problem-solving tasks, but of
emergency procedures read out aloud, in a controlled environment.
Verbal protocols require a kind of reading practice, i.e., the reader is asked to read a text
aloud, commenting on every detail that crosses her mind. She is asked to talk aloud while
reading. Although this instrument of looking into the reader’s mental process may have its
drawbacks, it allows the observer to gain access to underlying processes that might otherwise
be hidden in the resulting outcome of the task (Ericsson and Simon 1984; Cohen 1994).
The chosen type of interview is classified as semi-structured, because it contains a set of
pre-determined questions.
The observer may adapt the questions, however, in order to
elucidate or explore a relevant subject.
The Informants and the material
The verbal report sessions are carried out with eight naive informants, whose age ranges
from 20 to 26 years. The informants belong to two different groups. The first group is
composed of four native speakers of English.
The second is composed of four highly
proficient Brazilian readers of English. Both groups native and non-native informants are
post-graduates engaged in teacher training courses (in EFL) in England.
Three emergency procedures were selected to be read out aloud by the informants in the
verbal report session. The first is the type supposed to feature on corridors walls; the second
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as well, but the layout is more complex and the (linguistic) explanations longer; and the third
one is an exemplar of a text from a First-aid training booklet.
The informants could report in either their L1 or L2.
Data Analysis
Due to limitations of space, it is not possible to discuss all the hypotheses raised in the
study here. For the sake of the argument, the interaction of illustrating mechanisms (pictures)
with technical terms shall be taken as an example.
The general assumption, regarding the interaction of illustrating mechanisms (pictures)
with technical terms, in the study is that it may help the reader to understand unfamiliar terms.
Hypothesis: The interaction of pictures with unfamiliar technical terms may provide the necessary
clues for the reader to make the link between the unknown term and its representation in the picture.
Even when the exact meaning is not revealed by the illustration, the picture may provide the reader
with confidence to compensate for what she does not know in order to carry out the procedure.
A picture helps the reader to centre the words in the text around a particular theme,
providing concrete referents (Bransford, Stein and Shelton. 1984:31) for certain words that
might be considered difficult by the reader, such as t e c h n i c a l t e r m s .
Interviewer: Did the picture help you to understand the text ?
BK:-
Yeah, of course it did, if there wasn’t a picture I don’t think I’d have
understood it, everything would be confusing. (…)
Interviewer: Is there any term you are not familiar with in the text?
BK:
… ‘thrusts’.
Interviewer: Did it affect your reading?
BK:
Yeah, because it’s the title and.. because of the picture I concluded that
‘thrust’ is “golpe”, not “golpe” uhm… yes “golpe”, but I’m not totally confident
about it.
The term ‘carotid pulse’, in the first text, is accompanied by a verbal explanation in a
box. It has been noticed that the informants in the verbal report sessions found it more
difficult to understand its meaning through the verbal explanation than when it was presented
in the second text accompanied by a picture.
BF:
… ‘C’ following the arrows I’m moving to ‘C circulation’ now again ‘carotid pulse
for 5 seconds’, what to do.. in both the visual instructions are clearer than
the written ones, of course, the visual is .. sort of .. an almost universal
language, while the written language is quite specific.
The following extract exemplifies the effect that the picture depicting the ‘carotid
pulse’, in the second text, had on the readers, who had been already presented with its verbal
explanation before. It endorses the hypothesis, showing that the visual explanation did help
them to understand it more promptly. It was considered to be clearer and, as such, it proved
7
to be more effective to convey the meaning of unfamiliar terms in emergency texts than its
verbal counterpart.
EM:
… little arrows are now pointing me across… uhm to ‘circulation’ and the ‘C’:
‘check carotid pulse for 5 seconds’… uhm, I now know what carotid pulse is
uhm I wouldn’t know, but there is a picture showing uhm two fingers being
placed on the neck where I know there’s pulse, so I assume that that’s what
carotid pulse is, do this for five seconds
Pictorial representations may be even more crucial for foreign readers who are not
familiar with some of the words used in an emergency text, and in particular those terms that
are not very easy to guess from the context alone.
Interviewer: If you didn’t have any pictures there to help you, would you be able to do
what they tell you to?
BF:
With the written text only? I don’t think so.
Interviewer: Why not?
BF:
Because I don’t understand what ‘make a fist is’, if there wasn’t a picture to
show it to me, it would have been much more difficult to imagine what that
was… ‘quick inward’ I’ve an idea, but I’m not sure how that would be ‘and
upward thrust’, … it got me completely stuck, … without the the visual
instructions it’s difficult enough, in English without them… because I don’t
understand some words, without the pictures it would be impossible… in
Portuguese I reckon it might be possible… without the pictures… perhaps…
Notwithstanding, it would be too simplistic to assume that lack of lexical knowledge
could always be compensated by a clear illustration. Although a picture may improve the
understanding of a complex procedure, a written text cannot always anticipate lack of
knowledge of a common term in English. Besides, some processes may be quite difficult to
represent pictorially.
Conclusions
Text accessibility can only be achieved if elements from both verbal and non-verbal
forms of communication are seen interacting and conveying meanings that are beyond the
sign. Observing the effect of such interaction on the reader’s perception of the message is
crucial for finding out the causes for reading impairment (Benevides Lobianco, 2005).
The results of the study showed that illustrating devices have a clarifying effect on the
understanding of technical terms.
Besides, visual representations did help readers to
understand complex procedures in most cases. Pictorial representations proved to be even
more crucial for the Brazilian readers who did not know some of the technical terms that were
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difficult to guess from the context alone. They helped the readers to centre the meaning of
such terms around a probable theme (Bransford, Stein and Shelton 1984:31).
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