Exploring A Methodology for A Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) Study of Interpersonal Meanings in Malayalam

The theory of SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) (Halliday, 1970; Halliday & Greaves, 2008; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) offers a comprehensive view of language and grammar, within which the concept of trinocular vision defines the relationship of the clause in the lexico-grammatical stratum with its phonological realization and the meaning it construes. Though there are numerous studies on English and other languages using this framework, one can seldom find any on Indian languages. This paper is an exploratory study of the phonological realizations of one frequently used wh-interrogative in Malayalam (a Dravidian language, spoken especially in Kerala), in different contexts of situations, and at decoding the relationships, if any, between these realizations and the attitudinal meanings construed. The main aim is to explore a working methodology for further prosodic studies in Malayalam. Thestudy examines the prosodic realizations of the target wh-interrogative in different contexts of situations to construe specific attitudinal meanings. Speech data from five native informants were analyzed using PRAAT software (Boersma & Weenink, 2022). The findings indicate systematic associations between phonological realizations of the wh-interrogative and the attitudinal meanings construed in the contexts examined.