The Study of Autistic Children's Speech on the basis of Experiential Metafunction in the Framework of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar

The purpose of this study was to study the speech of 6 to 10-year-old autistic children based on Systemic Functional Grammar. Two groups, namely experimental including seven 6-10-year-old autistic children and control group, with seven 6 to 10-year-old non-autistic children, participated in the study based on stratified random sampling. Data were collected and analyzed according to experiential metafunction. Results showed that material and existential processes had the highest and the lowest percentage respectively. Emphasis on material process is indicative of a vast cognitive difficulty in finding appropriate words. The material process accounted for the highest means in both groups, followed by relational and mental processes. The lowest mean in both groups belonged to existential process which was almost zero in experimental group. In all processes, the control group used more processes, depicting they fulfilled a higher number of functions including expressing ideas, evaluating and describing. The outcomes would be beneficial for all the psychologists, autism trainers, and linguists.