Prosodic Features of Appraisal Meanings

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, association is made between kinds of structure with kinds of meanings. As an important interpersonal component, appraisal is realized prosodically, spreading and cumulating across a clause or a longer stretch of language. Based on Martin & White's classification of the three types of prosodic realization, viz. saturation, intensification and domination, this paper explores the complementarity and interaction of the different types of prosody in text. It is argued that appraisal studies can be more fruitfully conducted if generic features and discourse structures are also taken into consideration alongside micro-level lexical and clausal analyses.