Throughout the decades, pragmatic meaning, and intonation have been studied separately,

one in pragmatics and the other in the field of phonology. Even though in the last decades
linguists have been studying and researching about pragmatic meaning and intonation
together, there are not many studies about this. Because of this issue is that the following
study will take as it principal objective to unify the phonological and semantic &
pragmatic fields and to interpret meaning considering intonation and context.
The aim of this research is to find if the falling intonation of a specific word is related
with one specific group of pragmatic meanings and for this we proposed the following
thesis: In the oral discourse of Rupauls Drag Race contestants, the falling intonation
of the word GIRL is most likely to be related with warning, awareness and as a
pacifier. For the purpose of this research, we will be focusing on the pragmatic meaning
of the word girl depending on the TONE, rather than in the literal meaning or the other
two Ts of intonation.
Our motivation to carry out this study was our genuine interest in the studies related to
different communities, especially LGBT related studies. Also, we are big fans of the
show.

The results of this piece of research showed that the thesis we propose about the certain
group of meanings for the falling tone in the word GIRL were, in most of the cases,
correct. In most of the cases the pragmatic meanings were part of the group of awareness,
warning and pacifiers, and this was proven through the four judges (2 natives, from
England and New Zealand, and two bilinguals from Chile). Due to the fact that 62,5% of
the responses given by them matched the meanings assigned by us.
As a conclusion we believe that it is important to study intonation and pragmatic meaning
together, because meaning not only rely on the context, but also, in the tone, tonicity and
tonality of the word or sentence used. Also, as a result of this research, we conclude that
when English speakers use a falling tone for words like Girl in a context like in the
LGBT community, the pragmatic meaning, usually refers to reprimands, awareness,
warning, pacifiers and to mark them as a part of the same community. As a further
research would be interesting to develop this study to a level of compare the different
perception of pragmatic meaning depending on if the hearers are native speakers or
bilingual people with EFL.