Aviation Language between Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) and The Pilots: A Pragmatic study on Speech Acts

ABSTRACT

The study of language in the aviation area is relating to the utterances produced by Air Traffic Controller (ATC) and Pilots while driving aircraft. The utterances spoken by using limited vocabulary, contain meaning, and constitute act that is called speech act. The speech act is focused on the illocutionary act uttered by the speaker.

This research concerns the kind of speech act used by the aviation area especially ATC and Pilot communication, the function on uttering such acts and the form of the uttered acts. The kind of speech acts is analyzed by using Bach and Harnish’s category division of speech acts. The function of speech act follows Leech’s for function of speech act on the aviation area purposes. In addition, the direct and indirect speech act is on Searle’s theory.

The qualitative descriptive research is as the design of this study. The data are collected from the utterance produced by ATC and pilot communication in Directorate General of Civil Aviation-Air Port Region Authority IV Bali, and it is analyzed inductively from the participant observation done by the researcher herself.

As the result, the researcher finds that pilots and controllers uttered three kinds of act, such as constantive on 8 illocutionary acts, directive on 2 illocutionary acts and 1 acknowledgment act. It indicates that in ATC and pilots communication rarely express their feeling and reluctant to promise, threatening and offering. On the function of speech acts used, the researcher found the ATC and Pilot purpose their act mostly in the collaborative function on 24 illocutionary acts, then the competitive function on 18 illocutionary act, the convivial function on 4 illocutionary acts and conflictive do not find in the ATC and pilot communication. Last, the speech acts are usually used directly rather than indirectly since the direct speech act occurs on 41 acts and indirect speech act on 4 acts.

Therefore, the researcher suggests the further researchers to investigate aviation in security area which contain kinds of speech act in commisive act and functions of speech act in conflictive act or aviation language by using study English specific purposes.