International aviation professionals converse in a register of English derived from
postwar radiotelephony. Decades of use and regulatory pressure established Aviation
English (AE) as the lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers. Recently, the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) required aviation professionals prove
AE proficiency, resulting in development of a variety of AE programs and tests derived
from English language pedagogy, without accounting for unique aviation language
requirements. This dissertation explores linguistic characteristics that must be accounted
for in international AE programs.
Historically, issues of English language dominance were sidestepped by letting
speakers of regional languages use their own aviation jargon, allowing native English
speakers (NESs) to claim AE proficiency without learning a language comprehensible to
international AE users. By allowing limited “plain language” use, this practice paved the
way for colloquial jargon that is often opaque to non-native English speakers (NNESs).
This led to an ICAO requirement that international pilots and controllers have
conversational English (CE) proficiency.
A phonological examination of AE must begin by defining a baseline in
comparison with other language forms. Regarding AE, it is critical to determine if there
are differences with CE, because of the assumption of compatibility inherent in ICAO
proficiency requirements. This dissertation compared AE with CE by examining the
prosody and intelligibility of each language variety.
Prosodic differences in AE and CE were examined in two radio corpora: air
traffic controllers and radio newscasters. From these data I examined rhythm, intonation
and speech rate differences that could affect intelligibility across registers. Using
laboratory studies of pilot and non-pilot NESs and NNESs, I examined AE intelligibility
differences based on language background. NNES pilots scored worse on CE tasks and
better on AE tasks than NES non-pilots, indicating CE proficiency is not a predictor of
AE proficiency.
Dissertation findings suggest AE language training should focus on AE and not
on CE, as is current practice. Given phonological and other differences between AE and
CE, enlisting all AE users to learn and adhere to AE phraseology will save time and
money in training and alleviate miscommunication and confusion in flight, potentially
saving lives.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/23925 |
| Date | 31 October 2018 |
| Creators | Trippe, Julia |
| Contributors | Pederson, Eric |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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