No abstract

VERSÃO CORRIGIDA São Paulo 2015 VI AGRADECIMENTOS À Professora Stella, meus sinceros agradecimentos pelo apoio, pela paciência, pela motivação e pela inspiração. Ao Edimilson, meu parceiro de vida e meu consultor operacional. A minha família, principalmente ao meu irmão e à Roberta, pela paciência e pela compreensão da minha ausência. Aos meus afilhados e enteadas, que perderam a madrinha e a madrasta por alguns longos momentos. Aos meus amigos, que me apoiaram sempre, especialmente a Andrea, Sueli e Fabrícia. Ao pessoal do COMET, principalmente Joacyr, Danilo e Marlene. Obrigada pela companhia, pelo apoio e pela amizade! À Rozane, que tão cuidadosamente revisou esta dissertação. Aos meus alunos queridos, por me darem o motivo que me levou até aqui. Aos colegas da aviação, que me auxiliaram com a revisão dos textos que compõem o corpus de estudo:

Pilots and air traffic controllers need to undergo a specific English test in order to be granted a license for international operations. A language proficiency scale was developed to serve as a parameter to all aviation regulatory agencies throughout the world by targeting the language produced specifically by air traffic controllers and pilots in radio communications when non-routine situations (such as technical problems, bird strike, changes in weather, health problems on board, etc.) occur (ICAO 2010). However, there is a lack of empirical investigation which could shed light upon this particular register helping the users of the scale with its understanding. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper outlines a compilation of the Radiotelephony Plain English Corpus (RPTEC), a spoken corpus of aeronautical communication consisting of transcriptions of exchanges between pilots and air traffic controllers in non-routine situations for research and pedagogical purposes. By presenting steps taken during the process, we intend to provide fellow researchers with data which may suit other purposes and yield further analyses, as well as enlighten similar investigations in the field of English for Specific Purposes.

This study explores the pragmatics of aviation English (AE) as a lingua franca in radiotelephony (R/T) communications primarily between aviators and air traffic controllers worldwide. AE is a crosslinguistic register used by aviation professionals who do not necessarily share their first languages and cultures. Accordingly, mutual intelligibility is the ultimate goal, as in English as a lingua franca (ELF) featuring message‐oriented accommodation. Simultaneously, AE is a highly restricted and relatively stable register, as its use is mandated to maximize accuracy, conciseness, and clarity of communication—factors all contributing to air safety. While instruction and testing in AE have been investigated in applied linguistics, its pragmatics‐focused aspects are underexplored. In this qualitative corpus‐informed study, we first relied on a small corpus of R/T communications in nonroutine situations to identify 3 cases of communication difficulty and then, investigate in depth the discursive construction of meaning, especially in terms of the pragmatic strategies the interactants used on the radio. Drawing exclusively on ELF‐speaker exchanges from the corpus, we illustrate the process of the negotiation of meaning within the constraints of the given aviation contexts. The findings of this study reveal similarities and differences between AE in R/T communications and general ELF discourses described in the literature. We conclude by offering pedagogical implications for enhanced aeronautical training addressing pragmatic and interactional competence.

Inglês aeronáutico é o termo empregado para se referir às comunicações que ocorrem entre pilotos e controladores de tráfego aéreo durante os voos em espaço aéreo internacional. Neste artigo, apresentaremos dados de quatro corpora de inglês aeronáutico: dois de comunicações aeronáuticas reais e dois de atividades didáticas envolvendo aprendizes brasileiros, sendo um de pilotos e o outro de controladores. Será discutida a metodologia empregada para a compilação de cada um deles e realizada uma análise contrastiva de termos oriundos dos quatro corpora. Os resultados poderão ser aplicados tanto para informar o desenvolvimento de currículos quanto na elaboração de atividades didáticas voltadas a esses aprendizes, a fim de que desempenhem suas atividades com segurança.