{"id":5,"date":"2007-12-21T14:25:35","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T12:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=5"},"modified":"2008-06-01T16:30:51","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T14:30:51","slug":"linguistic-dimensions-of-crisis-talk-formalising-structures-in-a-controlled-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"Linguistic dimensions of crisis talk: Formalising structures in a controlled language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linguistic dimensions of crisis talk: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>Formalising structures in a controlled language<\/span>. <\/em>By Claudia Sassen<\/strong>. (Pragmatics & beyond new s<\/span>eries<\/span><\/st1:place><\/st1:city> 136.) <\/span>Amsterdam<\/span><\/st1:place><\/st1:city>: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. ix, 230. ISBN 9789027253798<\/a>. $132 (Hb).<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Charlotte Brammer<\/strong><\/a>, <\/span>Samford<\/span><\/em><\/st1:placename> <\/span><\/em>University<\/span><\/em><\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

In Linguistic dimensions of crisis talk<\/em>, Claudia Sassen presents a complex method for describing and analyzing crisis talk within the specific realm of aviation parlance and posits the method\u2019s applicability to other types of crisis talk. Her goal seems two-fold: to illuminate possible communicative opportunities to avoid future crises and to propose a methodology that \u2018promises to lead to extensions for a comprehensive modeling of discourse that is both theoretically well founded and empirically testable\u2019 (175).<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

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In Ch. 1, S uses her previous work (2003) to carefully define \u2018crisis talk\u2019 as \u2018a dialogue genre that occurs in threatening situations of unpredictable outcome, with no obvious way out, and requiring spontaneous decision, unconventional strategies and unrehearsed actions\u2019 (1). In Ch. 2, she justifies her use of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) as a \u2018reductionist\u2019 tool for operationalizing illocutionary force, as derived primarily from Austin 1962, Searle 1969, and Searle & Vanderveken 1985, among others.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

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Seventy-seven transcript files and five audio files make up the corpus of air traffic control and cockpit voice recordings (ATC\/CVR) used for this project. As a condition for inclusion in the corpus, the files are available on the internet. Additionally, all of the transcripts are in English, even though English may not have been the first language for all speakers. Chs. 3 and 4 contain extensive detail of S\u2019s use of KWIC-concordance and XML-markup, and provide as well a list of steps for creating the XML tags (115). In Ch. 4, S finds that intra-cockpit conversation is \u2018leaky\u2019 at times, meaning nonprofessional or off-task, and that normal conversation patterns are disrupted (131). One possible explanation for this behavior, according to S, is because \u2018the participants, in particular the crew hopes to receive help from the tower\u2019 (sic, 132). <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

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In Ch. 5, S selects three transcripts for closer analysis and makes several observations about crisis talk in comparison to noncrisis talk in aviation. First, she finds that crisis talk exhibits more patterns, defined in terms of illocutionary force (e.g. command, ask, response). She also finds that elaboration occurs only in the noncrisis talk examples, presumably because \u2018to elaborate on one\u2019s preceding clarification is probably too time-consuming for a situation that requires quick action\u2019 (155). Not surprisingly, perhaps, she also finds that expressives (curses and warnings) are relatively frequent in crisis talk, but not in noncrisis conversation; similarly, \u2018the number of politeness formulae like thank <\/em>and greet<\/em> decreases in crisis talk\u2019 (155). In sum, S develops a speech act\/HPSG model in order \u2018to detect leaky and thus dangerous points in communication \u2026 to minimise escalations during flights and to make aviation safer\u2019 (173). Her model appears substantive and should be tested in other types of crisis talk. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linguistic dimensions of crisis talk: Formalising structures in a controlled language. By Claudia Sassen. (Pragmatics & beyond new series 136.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. ix, 230. ISBN 9789027253798. $132 (Hb). Reviewed by Charlotte Brammer, Samford University In Linguistic dimensions of crisis talk, Claudia Sassen presents a complex method for describing and analyzing crisis talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}