The study analyses the variations of Mappila Malayalam qualitatively and quantitatively in its changing social contexts. Mappila Malayalam is the dialect spoken by the Muslim community in the Malabar region of Kerala and considered to be the most divergent variety of Malayalam. Several aspects of variations that define distinct regional and social dialects of Malayalam keep a room for a fine-grained attempt to empirically explain the interactions of social variables in the manifestations of identity and language variation in progress. An ethnohistorical approach that largely employs the Labovian framework of secular linguistics buttresses the present study on variations of Mappila Malayalam at the level of phonology, morphosyntax and lexis. It has put forward the construct of apparent time as a means of inferring diachronic change in progress based on synchronic patterns and contributed to the body of literature that establishes the relationship between social and linguistic variables. The analysis observed the interplay of an order of priority hierarchy among the variants and also among the levels of linguistic expression. The phenomenon is also determined by the visibility of the variants under the influence of specific linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The research seeks to apprehend a generic pattern of variation process, which is in a cyclic-progressive manner and affirms that such an empirical variationist approach can be successfully applied to alternative languages with similar variation contexts. Broadly, examining the variations of Mappila Malayalam raises important theoretical questions about the application of sociolinguistic variationist methods in distinct contexts and how they, with qualitative and quantitative analysis, can illuminate nuanced relationships between language variation, social factors, projecting identities within the hegemonic idealisation of the Language particularly in the context of Malayalam.

KEYWORDS: Mappila Malayalam, Variation, Malabar, Projecting identity, Marker