A corpus-driven approach to Aviation English in pilot flight training ........87

Abstract

Radio-telephonic communication between professional pilots and air traffic controllers has been the topic of numerous corpus research projects in the field of Aviation English (AE) in recent years (see BARSHI; FARRIS, 2013; BOROWSKA, 2017; FRIGINAL et al., 2020). Notably, Bieswanger (2016), following Biber and Conrad’s (2009) framework for register analysis, identified two distinct, specialized, and highly restricted registers of AE in use by professional aviation personnel: Standard Phraseology and “plain” AE. Similar corpusdriven register analyses of discourse between student pilots and their flight instructors in training program contexts is scarce. The Corpus of Flight Training (CFT) monitor corpus developed in this study currently covers 53 hours of transcribed audio and video recordings of one-on-one, instructional communication in AE between flight instructors and student pilots. Authentic linguistic data was collected in three key contexts of flight training operations: oral instructional activities, Flight Training Devices (FTDs), and in-air flight. This paper discusses the results of a quantitative, exploratory multidimensional analysis (MDA) (BIBER, 1988; FRIGINAL, 2013) comparing preliminary CFT data between the aforementioned three flight activities to other spoken and written registers of English. Preliminary findings suggest a strong overlap of flight training activities with the English registers related to involved persuasion and information interaction. Linguistic features between the CFT and the Brown and LOB corpora as well as language use based on activity type will be discussed. These initial results can help further refine target language usage for Aviation English assessments and inform curricula for ab initio pilots.