218 Chapter Ten
participants in the wide domain of radiotelephony. Once radiotelephony is
put into the sphere of human factor safety, other participants appear –
members of the flight crew, cabin crew (in the airplane), and air traffic
control co-workers (in the air traffic control tower).
From the interactional point of view of discourse analysis, all
participants in categories of the aforementioned radiotelephony domain are
both senders and addressees of radiotelephony safety communication
events. In other words, if radiotelephony communication and its discourse
is located in the safety sphere, many more participants appear on the stage.
However, they are distinguished by their inequality with direct
radiotelephony interaction. Pilots and air traffic controllers are direct
participants and the others – indirect.
Obviously, passengers are in a special category of radiotelephony
discourse. They are neither direct nor indirect participants of the discourse,
but they are a major constituent of flight safety discursivity. Hence, the
delimitation of radiotelephony discourse by its principal authors is
insufficient and needs to be extended to a more complex picture of all its
relevant participants, whether or not these are actively involved in
radiotelephony communication.
Another way of studying radiotelephony communication is by focusing
on the nature of the professional practices being accomplished, i.e., the
text of exchanges, rather than only on the nature of its participants.
To analyse ‘professional’ practices, a much deeper understanding is
needed of context in all its varied forms, including studies of how
participants undertake these discursive tasks, perform professional actions,
and what they achieve through these discursive and professional activities
and practices (Bhatia 2010).
What is specifically interesting about radiotelephony discourse
analysis is that the professional practices are realized through technical
procedures of safe flight operation and are at the same time discursive
practices. In other words, radiotelephony discourse of the professional
practices has safety functions and implications.
Although there are many more ways we may approach the problems of
definition and delimitation of a special discourse, we may finally take the
whole context as decisive for the definition of radiotelephony discourse.
Participants and actions are the core of such contexts, but we may further
analyze such contexts broadly in terms of operational technical procedures
and communicative events and encounters,with their own settings (time,
place, circumstances), occasions, intentions, functions, goals, and flight
safety implications.