Winner of the ASFLA (Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association) M. A. K. Halliday Prize 2023

This book is the first comprehensive account of 'body language' as 'paralanguage' informed by Systemic Functional Semiotics (SFS). It brings together the collaborative work of internationally renowned academics and emerging scholars to offer a fresh linguistic perspective on gesture, body orientation, body movement, facial expression and voice quality resources that support all spoken language.

The authors create a framework for distinguishing non-semiotic behaviour from paralanguage, and provide a comprehensive modelling of paralanguage in each of the three metafunctions of meaning (ideational, interpersonal and textual). Illustrations of the application of this new model for multimodal discourse analysis draw on a range of contexts, from social media vlogs, to animated children's narratives, to face-to-face teaching. Modelling Paralanguage Using Systemic Functional Semiotics offers an innovative way for dealing with culture-specific and context specific paralanguage.

Thu Ngo is Lecturer in Language and Literacy in the School of Education at Australian Catholic University, Australia.

Susan Hood is Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia.

J. R. Martin is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Clare Painter is Honorary Associate in the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia.

Bradley A. Smith is Honorary Associate in the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia.

Michele Zappavigna is Associate Professor in the School of the Arts & Media at the University of Sydney, Australia.