Can I add my congratulations to the authors of the winning book on paralanguage. Although I have not yet got round to reading the book itself — too much interesting stuff coming out at the moment! — I did attend the launch last year at the ACU in North Sydney, where it shared the stage with the book on science teaching co-authored by Len Unsworth and his team. As I remember remarking to my landlady afterwards, the launch itself was one of the first such events I had attended post-lockdown, and it was no fluffy PR exercise but a serious academic session, with (from memory) all of the authors of both books either present or attending via Zoom and talking about their experience in doing the research and writing it up.Speaking personally, I am delighted to see such products of multidisciplinary team projects getting published. Given the enormous range of relevant knowledge, it is not feasible anymore for one or two authors from the same discipline to cover it all, and it was very clear from the launch of both books how much the participants had benefited from the cross-fertilisation and collegiality that such collaborations encourage.My congratulations again to the co-authors of the winning book — as well as to the runners up, all of whose books look like must reads — and to the organising committee for carrying through such a worthy — and frankly very cheering! — project.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, the authors' model of "paralanguage" is Cléirigh's model of body language, rebranded as their own work. See The Inaugural MAK Halliday Prize Awarded To Cléirigh's Plagiarisers.
[2] To be clear, what the authors talked about was the meetings they had in order to try and understand Cléirigh's very simple model.
[3] To be clear, the model was created by one person, Cléirigh, using just one theory in one discipline, SFL.
