English in maritime radiotelephony

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Recent attention on English as the international maritime language has focused on Seaspeak for deck officers, the equivalent of Airspeak for airline pilots. However, Seaspeak is not the only reduced language used at sea, and this study draws attention to the language of the ship's radio officer in the setting up of telephone link calls between the ship and the shore telephone network. Although the format for such communication has to some extent been officially standardized into a reduced language, these procedures do not cover all eventualities, while features of natural language such as elision and varied politeness strategies persist, and unanticipated problems such as communication difficulties also result in departures from the standard procedures. Current trends in shipping policy are leading to a decline in the proportion of native English speakers among radio officers, and even to the redundancy of radio officers in general. This paper argues for the continuing role of shipboard communication specialists, and the necessity for adequate linguistic preparation during their training.