A prosodic profile of American Aviation English

Abstract

Aviation English is a codified register of English used by international pilots and controllers, derived from postwar American radiotelephony. Although regulations require proficiency in Aviation English, little has been done to describe it. The current study seeks to add to the literature by describing the prosodic profile, or rhythm and intonation, of American Aviation English as compared to Standard American English. Specifically, we examine corpora of air traffic controller speech and professional radio broadcasters’ speech: two corpora of naturally produced speech. This study demonstrates that Aviation English has a more restricted pitch range, is faster, and exhibits less variable vowel durations and more variable consonant durations than Standard English. These prosodic differences from Standard English may create difficulties for Aviation English users, and indicate inaccuracy in the assumption that attaining proficiency in conversational English is sufficient for proficiency in Aviation English.