ASFLA Awards The Inaugural MAK Halliday Prize To Cléirigh's Plagiarisers

The inaugural MAK Halliday Prize has been awarded to Thu Ngo, Susan Hood, J.R. Martin, Clare Painter, Bradley A. Smith and Michele Zappavigna for their book Modelling Paralanguage using Systemic Functional Semiotics: Theory and Application.

As demonstrated in meticulous detail here for a previous publication, the authors have rebranded Cléirigh's model of body language as their model of paralanguage, in which Cléirigh's 'linguistic' body language is rebranded as their 'sonovergent' paralanguage, and Cléirigh's 'epilinguistic' body language is rebranded as their 'semovergent' paralanguage. By unnecessarily relabelling Cléirigh's model, they give the false impression that Cléirigh's ideas are theirs.

Plagiarism: the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

See, for example:

An Approach "Inspired" By Cléirigh’s "Contributions"

Misrepresenting Cléirigh's Ideas As Their Own

The Pretext For Rebranding Cléirigh's Body Language Systems As The Authors' Paralanguage Systems

Misrepresenting Cléirigh's Work As The Authors' Work

Martin's Model Of Paralanguage

The fact that more worthy contenders were passed over — the works of Matthiessen et al, McCabe, and Maagerø et al — suggests either that theoretical competence and intellectual integrity were not high on the list of criteria for determining the winner, or that the judges lacked the knowledge and ability to apply these criteria to the works submitted for the prize.

All in all, if this first award is any indication, the MAK Halliday Prize has been established by the Sydney-based members of ASFLA merely to confer the prestige status of 'Halliday' on themselves. This conclusion is supported by the fact that ASFLA chose a judging committee that was mostly composed of educationalists affiliated with Martin's pedagogy, rather than experts on SFL theory, and the fact that the only nominee from Sydney-based members of ASFLA was the work that just happened to be awarded the prize — at an ASFLA conference.