Cooperative principle and sociocultural factors in discourse: The case of Aviation English

Abstract Communication has been known as a main issue in many aspects of human interactions including aviation interactions as a main branch of transportation (Krivonos, 2007). It plays a significant role in aviation environment regarding safety. In the present study, discourse analysis of airspeak between controllers and pilots has been investigated. The aims of this study are 1) investigating the cooperative principle in the communications between controllers and pilots, 2) investigating the cultural factors in the aviation interactions and 3) identifying the reasons of aviation mishaps considering their discourse based on Grice’s (1975) Maxims. To this end, first, a corpus of expressions in the interaction between controllers and pilots in 33 aviation incidents has been collected and analyzed. Then, considering the cooperative principle, Grice’s (1975) Maxims have been computed. Finally, the reasons of aviation incidents considering the linguistic and discourse factors have been identified. The paper highlights that within the socio-technical context of aviation social factors such as culture and different styles of communication as well as cooperative principle must be taken into account in aviation communication.

کلیدواژه ها:

aviation interactions ، aviation mishaps ، cooperative principle