Reported speech in Aviation English: an analysis through two specific corpora
Aline Pacheco
Abstract
Aviation English is a specialized language and, as such, features some specific structures that should be carefully analyzed to be dealt with appropriately. Reported Speech (RS) constitutes an essential communicative function for pilots and controllers because they must often relay information to different parties in complex communication scenarios. Regarding the teaching and learning of RS, the most traditional orientation is that it should observe tense backshifting - the possibilities of not shifting back the tense seem to be treated as exceptions, even in specialized coursebooks. This study discusses the use of RS in aeronautical communications by analyzing the occurrences of this structure in two specialized corpora – CORPAC, the Corpus of Pilot and ATC Communications and RTPEC, the Radiotelephony and Plain English Corpus, examining reporting verbs used in actual conversation samples and strictures after the verbs ‘said’ and ‘told’. The main findings show the most used reporting verbs and suggest that around 50% of the indirect reported clauses in aviation maintain the original tense, which seems to be evidence that pilots and ATCs choose to report no changes in the scenario when relaying information in a similar proportion to choosing to backshift. Accordingly, teaching and learning resources like specialized coursebooks or tailordesigned materials should factor the real communication features in their activities.