Prof. Dr. Peter John

The paper studies verbal maritime communication by categorising spontaneous professional discourse observed in co-operative full-mission simulation exercises into the illocutionary points of commissives and directives according to Searle's original classification. The research adopts a Corpus Pragmatics approach by combining vertical Corpus Linguistics methods with horizontal Pragmatics analyses. Between-group analyses of speech acts by native and non-native speakers of English are carried out and possible risks of miscommunication classified and compared. On the basis of the circular Osgood-Schramm communication model the sender–receiver interaction is investigated for either speaker group. Findings include both quantitative and qualitative between-group differences in locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts. These differences are evaluated as causal factors in effective communicative acts and as contributory factors for miscommunication in the maritime domain.

This paper compares ESP communication by non-native speakers of Maritime English with communication outside a nautical setting in order to profile its structural idiosyncrasy. Vocabulary growth, word frequencies, lexical and key word densities, and grammar diversity as dependent linguistic variables observed in transcribed full-mission simulation exercises are contrasted to the Brown Corpus, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English and the Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP). Using quantitative linguistics, inherent structural patterns of nautical team communication are identified and similarities and variations highlighted. Significant differences found in all linguistic features are gauged by means of the Probability of Superiority (PS) effect size. A linguistic profile is created which quantifies the observed language patterns and provides a quantitative model for the linguistic genre of this particular discourse community. The model fills the gap of quantitative research on empirical bridge team communication samples and delivers a valid tool for estimating the magnitude of observed linguistic effects.