Paul John Thibault

• Thibault, Paul John (2023). Languaging, human projects, selves, and societies of selves. Critical Discourse Studies. ISSN 1740-5904. doi: 10.1080/17405904.2023.2283171.
• Shi, Dan & Thibault, Paul John (2022). Languaging dynamics of classroom interactivity: A distributed view of the pedagogic recontextualization in L2 tertiary settings. Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. ISSN 0037-1998. 2022(245), p. 125–155. doi: 10.1515/sem-2020-0096. Show summary

  The current study investigates classroom interactivity in L2 tertiary literature classrooms in Hong Kong and Taiwan when ESL/EFL students engage with and interpret literary texts in classroom talk as a pedagogic process of text recontextualization. It proposes a more ecological-based approach to language and languaging dynamics that is complementary to current social semiotic approaches to multimodality. It also aims to open up a more embodied analysis of the meaning-making process in tertiary literature classrooms. The multimodal investigation of real-time classroom interactivity based on a multi-scalar approach showcases an embodied coordination of vocalization and gesticulation as integral aspects of the dynamic whole-body sense-making activity that arises in the pedagogic process of text recontextualization. The dynamics vary from students’ solo speech in individual presentation to teacher–student interactions in group discussion and to student–student interactions in role-play. The distributed language view of first-order languaging dynamics demonstrates the embodied and distributed dimensions of the real-time classroom interactivity that couples pedagogic subjects to the affordances of their pedagogic environment. It also provides insights into the impact of pedagogic activities on the multi-scalar dynamics of the meaning-making process with reference to embodied speech–gesture coordination. The paper demonstrates the value of applying an ecologically embodied perspective to multimodal studies in classroom research and stimulates a re-thinking of some of the important aspects of classroom interactivity that have received little attention thus far.

• Johannessen, Christian Mosbæk; Longcamp, Marieke; Stuart, Susan A.J.; Thibault, Paul John & Baber, Chris (2021). The look of writing in reading. Graphetic empathy in making and perceiving graphic traces. Language Sciences. ISSN 0388-0001. 84. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101363.
• Thibault, Paul John (2020). Languaging as Emergent Constraint-satisfying Self-organizing Activity Dialogical context-completing, context-making, and context-seeking dynamics. Signifiances (Signifying). ISSN 2606-0442. 4(1), p. 20–65. doi: 10.18145/signifiances.v4i1.269. Show summary

  Languaging is a manifestation of intelligent human action that enables selves to seek and to co-articulate functional fits between self and selected aspects of the self's social and cultural environments. Selves have open-ended endogenous tendencies that strive for articulation in social situations. The final products of these tendencies -- specific utterances -- have functional capacities to enter into co-articulated relations with the other functioning components of larger-scale socio-affective-cognitive assemblages. Internal processes of microgenetic construction that have their origins in the pre-linguistic infra-structure of the self are corporeally schematized and entrained to and shaped by global order parameters, e.g., lexicogrammatical pattern. Intrinsic functional constraints on languaging activity are the work of a complex non-optimized system (the self) that draws on available resources in context-sensitive ways in order to yield social and cognitive outcomes. Infant proto-language is a guide to the emergence of these constraints.

• Thibault, Paul John & Baldry, Anthony (2020). Multimodal Ecological Literacy: Animal and human interactions in the Animal Rescue genre, Multiliteracy Advances and Multimodal Challenges in ELT Environments. Forum Editrice. ISSN 9788832831535. p. 155–218.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Simplex selves, functional synergies, and selving: Languaging in a complex world. Language Sciences. ISSN 0388-0001. 71, p. 49–67. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2018.03.002.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Integrating self, voice, experience Some thoughts on Harris?s idea of self communication and its relevance to a dialogical account of languaging. Language and Dialogue. ISSN 2210-4119. 8(1), p. 159–179. doi: 10.1075/ld.00010.thi.
• Thibault, Paul John (2017). Graphic trace-making as articulated-expressive trajectories of movement; de-textualizing and de-stratifying writing. In Mosbæk Johannessen, Christian & van Leeuwen, Theo (Ed.), The Materiality of Writing; A Trace-Making Perspective. Routledge. ISSN 978-1-138-67972-6. doi: 10.4324/9781315537306-4.
• Thibault, Paul John (2017). Language Dynamics, values, and interactivity. In Duncker, Dorthe & Perregaard, Bettina (Ed.), Creativity and continuity: Perspectives on the dynamics of language conventionalisation. U Press. ISSN 9788793060395. p. 353–378.
• Thibault, Paul John (2017). Emotional labour and the neoliberal entrepreneurial self at work and in the home: emotions as privatised individual capital or revolutionary social praxis? In Pablé, Adrian (Eds.), Critical Humanist Perspectives The Integrational Turn in Philosophy of Language and Communication. Routledge. ISSN 9781315621760. doi: 10.4324/9781315621760-14.
• Thibault, Paul John (2017). The reflexivity of human languaging and Nigel Love’s two orders of language . Language Sciences. ISSN 0388-0001. 61, p. 74–85. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2016.09.014.
• Thibault, Paul John & Tønnessen, Morten (2016). Human perceptions of animals : a multimodal event analysis of interview data. In Maran, Timo; Tønnessen, Morten; Oma, Kristin Armstrong; Kiiroja, Laura; Magnus, Riin; Mäekivi, Nelly; Rattasepp, Silver; Thibault, Paul John & Tüür, Kadri (Ed.), Animal Umwelten in a Changing World. Zoosemiotic Perspectives. University of Tartu Press. ISSN 978-9949-77-280-3. p. 66–106.
• Thibault, Paul John (2015). The microgenesis of meaning and value: Differentiation-articulation in brain and body and the text-context relation in Systemic-Functional linguistics. In Kvåle, Gunhild; Maagerø, Eva & Veum, Aslaug (Ed.), Kontekst, språk og multimodalitet: Nyere sosialsemiotiske perspektiver. Fagbokforlaget. ISSN 978-82-321-0433-8. p. 205–274.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Hypermedia Selves and Hypermedia Stories: Narrativity, writing, and normativity in personal blogs. In Cambria, Mariavita; Arizzi, Cristina & Magazzu, Giulia (Ed.), Web Genres and Web Tools: Contributions from the Living Knowledge project. IBIS. ISSN 9788871644042. p. 7–50.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). The Interaction Order of Predicational Language: Lexicogrammar, Second order Language, and Cognitive-semiotic Dynamics. In Thomas, Lisa; Zhang, Jin & Fang, Qi (Ed.), Proceedings of the Second Northeast Asia International Symposium on Language, Literature and Translation Changchun, China, May 18-20, 2012. American Scholars Press. ISSN 9780984520985. p. 678–692. doi: 10.1080/10407413.2011.591274.
• Thibault, Paul John (2011). Language Behavioras Catalytic Process: Steps Towards a Theory of Living Language (Part 2). Public Journal of Semiotics (PJOS). ISSN 1918-9907. 3(2).
• Thibault, Paul John (2011). Language Behavior as Catalytic Prosess: Steps Towards a Theory of Living Language (Part 1). Public Journal of Semiotics (PJOS). ISSN 1918-9907. 3(2). doi: 10.37693/pjos.2011.3.8833.
• Thibault, Paul John (2011). First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language: The Distributed Language View. Ecological psychology. ISSN 1040-7413. 23(3), p. 210–245. doi: 10.1080/10407413.2011.591274. Show summary

  This article articulates some aspects of an emerging perspective shift on language: the distributed view. According to this view, languaging behavior and its organization is irreducible to the formal abstracta that have characterized the focus on a de Saussure-type system of formal regularities in mainstream linguistics over the past century. Language, in the distributed view, is a radically heterogeneous phenomenon that is spread across diverse spatiotemporal scales ranging from the neural to the cultural. It is not localizable on any one of them, but it involves complex interactions between phenomena on many different scales. A crucial distinction is thus presented and explained, viz. first-order languaging and second-order language. The former is grounded in the intrinsic expressivity and interactivity of human bodies-in-interaction. Second-order patterns emanate from the cultural dynamics of an entire population of interacting agents on longer, slower cultural-historical time-scales. The article also engages in a dialogue with Gibson’s (1966/1983, 1979/1986) ecological theory of perception-action. An analysis of a video-recorded interaction illustrates some aspects of the integration of scales involved in the whole-body sense-making that is talk.

• Thibault, Paul J. (2008). Face-to-face communication and body language, Handbook of interpersonal communication. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 285–330.
• Baldry, Anthony & Thibault, Paul J. (2008). Applications of multimodal concordances. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business. ISSN 0904-1699. p. 1–31.
• Thibault, Paul J. & Baldry, Anthony (2006). 'Multimodal corpus linguistics' (with Anthony baldry), System and Corpus : Exploring Connections Edited by: Geoff Thompson, Susan Hunston. Equinox Publishing. p. 164–183.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Notes on the Concepts of Realization and Meaning in Systemic-Functional Linguistics, Functional Linguistics: Theory and Application, Chang Chenguang and Huang Guowen (eds.). Higher Education Press. p. 245–261.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Multimodal corpus linguistics, System and Corpus: Susan Hunston and Geoffrey Thompson (eds.). Equinox Publishing.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). The evolutionary dimension: the thin edge of the wedge ? grammar and discourse in the evolution of language, James D. Benson and William S. Greaves (eds.): Functional Dimensions of Ape-Human Discourse. Equinox Publishing. p. 76–99.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). The interpersonal gateway to the meaning of mind: unifying the inter- and intraorganism perspectives on language, Continuing Discourse on Language: A Functional Perspective, Vol. 1. A volume presented to Michael Halliday on the occasion of his 80th birthday at the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress, Sydney, July 2005. Ruqaiya Hasan, Christian Matthiessen, and Jonathan J. Webster (eds.). Equinox Publishing. p. 117–156.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2004). Agency, individuation, and meaning-making: reflections onan episode of bonobo-human interaction, Development of Language : Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals / Geoffrey Williams and Annabelle Lukin (eds.). Continuum. p. 112–136.

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• Thibault, Paul John (2020). Distributed Languaging, Affective Dynamics, and the Human Ecology Volume I The Sense-making Body. Routledge. ISBN 9780815379539. 318 p.
• Thibault, Paul John (2020). Distributed Languaging, Affective Dynamics, and the Human Ecology Volume II Co-articulating Self and World. Routledge. ISBN 9780367611910. 310 p.
• Maran, Timo; Tønnessen, Morten; Oma, Kristin Armstrong; Kiiroja, Laura; Magnus, Riin & Mäekivi, Nelly [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2016). Animal Umwelten in a Changing World. Zoosemiotic Perspectives. University of Tartu Press. ISBN 978-9949-77-280-3. 18(18). 276 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Thibault, Paul J. & Baldry, Anthony (2006). Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis: A multimedia toolkit and coursebook. Equinox Publishing. ISBN 1904768067. 270 p.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2004). Agency and Consciousness in Discourse: Self-other Dynamics as a Complex System. Continuum. ISBN 826474268. 352 p.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2004). Brain, Mind, and the Signifying Body: An Ecosocial Semiotic Theory. Continuum. ISBN 826469655. 416 p.

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• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Languaging and the Extended Human Ecology: The Distributed View.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Selected Topics in Linguistics: Re-exploring some basic issues .
• Thibault, Paul John; Baber, Chris; Longcamp, Mariek; Johannessen, Christian Moesbaek & Stuart, Susan (2018). Graphics in Interactivity – Preliminary Considerations.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Language and Situationality.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). The Languaging that Goes on Around and In Relation to Text.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). The Languaging that Goes on Around and In Relation to Text.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). The Linguistic Imagination: Nature’s Trick, Culture’s Treat .
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Multimodal Event Analysis in a Cognitive Ethnography of In Vivo Students’ Learning.
• Thibault, Paul John (2018). Saussure. In Di Leo, Jeffrey R. (Eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350012806. p. 675–677.
• Tønnessen, Morten; Kiiroja, Laura & Thibault, Paul John (2016). Proto-language in wolves.
• Tønnessen, Morten & Thibault, Paul John (2015). Human Perceptions of Wolves and other Animals in Kristiansand, Kautokeino and Rendalen.
• Tønnessen, Morten; Thibault, Paul John & Kiiroja, Laura (2015). Human Perceptions of Wolves and other Animals in Contemporary Norway.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Interactivity, Values, and the Affordances of Mobile Learning in a University Setting: An Empirical Cognitive Ethnographic Study.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Co-designing Languaging through the Education of Reflexivity: The Role of Talk about Talk in Language Learning.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Distributed Language, Interactivity, and the Extended Human Ecology: Learning and Distributed Cognitive Systems.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Saussure’s semiological phonetics: Temporality, material dynamics and perception in la parole.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). The Interaction Order of Predicational Language: Lexicogrammar, Second-order Language, and Cognitive-semiotic Dynamics.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Distributed Language, Interactivity, and the Extended Human Ecology: Learning and Distributed Cognitive Systems.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). Interactivity, Reflexivity, and Languaging.
• Thibault, Paul John (2012). The Interaction Order of Predicational Language: Lexicogrammar, second-order language, and cognitive-semiotic dynamics.
• Thibault, Paul John (2011). What We Think We Know about Language, and What We can Learn about it from Kanzi and Family. On the human.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2008). Sign systems, The international Encyclopedia of Communication. Blackwell Publishing. p. 4619–4624.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Film talk, subtitling, and writing: the multimodal integration of diverse meaning-making activities.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Multimodal Corpus Linguistics.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Multimodal Discourse Analysis and the Distributed Nature of Activity and Meaning Making.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Language, Anticipatory Dynamics, and the Distributed Nature of Activity and Meaning Making.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Mental processes, agency, and interpersonal moral orders: the grammar of remembering and forgetting.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Multimodal Discourse Analysis and the Distributed Nature of Activity and Meaning-Making.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Multimodal Discourse Analysis and the Distributed Nature of Activity and Meaning Making.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). What kind of minded being has language?: Anticipatory dynamics, arguability, and agency in a normatively and recursively self-transforming learning system, Part 1. Linguistics and the Human Sciences. ISSN 1742-2906. 1(2).
• Thibault, Paul J. (2005). Brains, bodies, contextualizing activity and language: do humans (and bonobos) have a language faculty, and can they do without one? Linguistics and the Human Sciences. ISSN 1742-2906. 1(1), p. 99–125.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2004). Saussure, Ferdinand de, The Encyclopedia of Social Theory / George Ritzer, Jeff Stepnisky and Andrew Wernick (eds.). Sage Publications. p. 665–672.
• Thibault, Paul J. (2004). Semiology, The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, George Ritzer, Jeff Stepnisky and Andrew Wernick (eds.). Sage Publications. p. 687–693.

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