Peter Trenkner

Wismar University – Dept. of Maritime Studies

Warnemünde – Germany

Maritime English

An attempt of an imperfect definition

At the very beginning of my contribution the question may be asked whether we really need a definition of what we have been calling Maritime English (ME) for a number of years now. The firm answer is: Yes, we do.

And why that? I would like to try an answer first of all from a pragmatic rather than a purely theoretical point of view. I should add, however, that pragmatics will be insufficiently based without theory – of course.

It was, as I recall it, in the beginning or in the middle of the 80s when we began to call this phenomenon of specialized communication "Maritime English". We gave this restricted language a name without having an idea what exactly we were talking about. May be, we as English lecturers at colleges and universities did not even deem it necessary to define what kind of language we were imparting. Professional mariners at our institutions advised us what subject matters to teach to the students and we, qualified language teachers or applied linguists, did our level best to press the ideas of the professionals into a methodically more or less convincing instrumentarium, i.e. into a set of exercises of which we hoped they would meet somehow the expectations and communication requirements of our graduates at sea and in ports. A few of us scooped from their own seafaring experiences, others had to mobilize their imaginative faculties. The results were not too bad, anyhow.

It has also to be stated that ME as a subject of instruction had or even has frequently been regarded as a minor or propaedeutic subject, i.e. a subject belonging to preparatory instruction. This attitude was reflected in the number of teaching periods allocated to ME and in the status of the ME lecturer at many institutions.

The situation changed considerably starting in the middle of the 80s when the maritime professionals also realized what ME lecturers already knew, namely that quite a number of sometimes tragic and always costly shipping accidents, i.e. approximately 30 – 40%, happened due to communication deficiencies, first of all due to an insufficient command of what we call ME now.

Step by step ME now became or is becoming a co-equal subject of MET enjoying the same rights and having the same duties within the canon of maritime subjects along with navigation, ship's safety, cargo handling, maritime law, etc. Even university professors were appointed for this subject.

However, all the other subjects which claimed to represent the pure science of seafaring based on sufficiently clearly formulated definitions – not so ME, to its disadvantage, by the way. I personally got that to feel when I with a group of lecturers was charged with the development of a series of textbooks of ME which were expected to meet the requirements of an ever increasing demand on the communication skills at sea and in harbours. I had no choice but find out, i.e. to determine to my best knowledge what ME is in order to give my research just a touch of theoretical seriousness. And what mattered even more was that I urgently needed a practicable definition of ME to clarify its impact on the shipping industry, to define its limitations and possibilities, the tasks it was expected to fulfil, and in order to provide a kind of more or less reliable guidance for all activities in the seafaring branch involving language communication by means of the English language.

In the end I felt to have found a practicable definition which helps me and, may be, some others as well, to cope with the challenges of a dynamically developing, highly specific area of language activities, i.e. communication from ship to shore (and vice versa), from ship to ship (known as 4-s communication), in harbours, and on board vessels with multilingual crews. I clearly realized the value of a handy definition of ME when I got involved in more demanding international research projects, such as the development of the IMO-SMCP and MARCOM launched by the EC and completed meanwhile.

I would like to tackle the core of my presentation now, i.e. to advance to what I consider a practicable definition of ME.

At first I want to clarify what formal requirements a definition has to meet: "A definition should not be more difficult to understand than the words it defines" – that is what the Oxford Advanced Learners` Dictionary of 1990 says, and that is very wise, indeed, but it is not a definition proper of a definition – did you get it? The following explanation of mine, however, which I derived and compiled from many different books, might hopefully find certain acceptance and reads like this:

A definition is a sentence giving the essentials and characteristics of an occurrence, fact or thing, or revealing the meaning of a corresponding term. And: A definition should where ever possible not be negative or excluding, i.e. it should not just indicate the items which do not apply to an occurrence, fact, thing or term. However, negative or excluding definitions seem to be inevitable in a very few cases, namely if an intended positive definition would end up in a description rather than a definition due to the complexity of the matter in question. The one which I immediately recall in this respect is the excluding definition of what the term "under way" means in navigation. You will remember: According to the COLREGs a vessel is said to be under way when it is not at anchor, not made fast to the shore and/or not aground disregarding whether it makes way or not. By the way, the term "under way" is a false friend at least for German nautical students who tend to easily confuse it with "en route" or "on one`s way." Finally, as far as the formal demands on a definition are concerned: it should be as generalizing as possible and as concrete as necessary.

And now let us become more precise. What do I expect a definition of ME to provide in terms of its contents? I would like to start with a basic consideration. ME is a division of ESP – I think this is common truth and will find everybody's consensus. One of the fundamental approaches in ESP philosophy is that language is considered not as a subject rather than a service (McDonough 1984). This implies that a special language should always be considered in the context of activities of men tied to a special trade related purpose that means for ME - in the context of activities performed by maritime personnel in the shipping industry. This was the most essential starting point of my considerations and a reference line along which I sailed to find a practicable definition of ME.

It is getting more concrete now. ME is English language, i.e. ME, in spite of its numerous specific linguistic and communicative features is natural English. However, ME does not make use of all the means of the English language but only of those which are suited to meet the communicative requirements of a given maritime context best – that is why ME is regarded a restricted language as the other ESPs, too. In terms of grammar and syntax it means, for example, that almost all requirements ME might have in this respect may be satisfied by the existing grammatical and syntactic system of the English language since almost all its particularities are available from or at least pre-shaped or roughly disposed in the inventory of general English – but only a restricted and determinable number of them is made use of by ME. Anyhow, ME does not completely restrain from at least a few unique creations into the very established system of English grammar and syntax: think of constructions such as "own ship's movement", "anchors clear for let go", etc..

The most innovative branch of the English language is vocabulary, or in terms of ME – terminology. Here one may find the most striking examples. This is understandable since ME, closely tied to the maritime industry, has to provide the terms for new developments in technical systems of navigation and communication, organization of world shipping, legislation and so on. Almost monthly a number of new words emerge -–if you need any prove, read the IMO documents or Lloyd's List. However, all the newly created terms follow the rules of English word formation.

The role of terminology in ME communication has sometimes been considered in relative isolation thereby somewhat neglecting other important co-dominating communicative features of ME. It is because research has deeply been investigating into written or printed text types and considerably less intensively into spoken ones. Text types of the written form are more easily available, they provide more reliable data than text types of the spoken form which, however, are gaining more and more importance in the wake of technical innovations, but they require rather sophisticated methods of investigation (see Trenkner/Nielsen 1998).

What I do mean to say is that ME does not make use of all the means of the English language, it selectively scoops from those fields which may serve the maritime communicative context best. It is less flexible but not totally rigid in the area of grammar and syntax and highly innovative in the field of terminology complying there with the rules of English word formation but it may not be reduced to a purely terminology-based concept.

ME is used as a device for communication. This statement clearly reflects what I have said before: Communication in the given context means the interchange of intelligence or – less sophisticated – the strictly purposive exchange of language information within the maritime community or among maritime personnel performed in the course of their activities within the scope of the shipping industry. And the vehicle enabling this highly functional communication is ME.

ME – a device for communication, this is not a purely academic statement, ME is in practice handled and functioning that way. That means ME follows in its dominating fields certain communication principles which efficiently underpin its overriding functional aspect, this is especially obvious in text types of the spoken variety:

- in many of its realizations above all in on-board but also in external communication it follows the discourse rules of a military-like command speech or block language, i.e. giving order and responding accordingly

- in many other cases it is composed and performed according to the discourse rules of different dialogue types, also adhering to relatively strict conventions, applying unmistakable speech acts and a clear turn-taking.

And not to forget, there are also quite a number of phonological and prosodic conventions characterizing spoken text types of ME especially on radio, I will only point to some of them:

- the purposefully reduced speed of speaking on radio

- a clearly marked turn-taking in dialogues on radio

- the way to speak numbers as separate digits and the way of pronouncing the figures three, four, nine and thousand especially when spoken on radio

- avoiding contracted forms such as I'll, you're,

and there are many others making ME in its spoken version unique and characterizing its functionalism as its most essential communicative aspect apart from particular contents, of course. Also the SMCP may be regarded as a result of a consequently transformed functionalism in ME. All this may be summarized as "specific ME style", and this style creates the dominant communicative feature of ME, at least as its spoken part is concerned.

Plus - and this is one of the characteristics not to be met in other established ESPs, except English in Aviation: In quite a number of spoken text types and printed text types of a limited temporal validity, ME is subject to official or quasi-official language regulations as to format, content, and wording. With printed text types of a limited temporal validity I have in view printed or displayed distress, urgency and safety messages which mostly have a temporarily restricted impact.

Regarding the language regulations or language management mentioned above I would like to refer, e.g. to the guidelines for drafting navigational warnings, VTS reporting procedures and again the IMO-SMCP, too.

The maritime community or the maritime personnel among whom ME is used is internationally composed. It is the qualifier "international" what determines the message of this statement. Under maritime community or maritime personnel, i.e. those who use ME in pursuit of their jobs in the shipping industry I would count first of all the mariners on shipboard, the parties handling the vessels in the harbour, the staff of institutions or authorities ashore which directly organize, control and support the actively sailing fleet, and of shipping companies that part of the staff to a certain extent which is involved in managing the fleet's technical and economic performance.

Back to the international aspect of ME. The main source of ME or better its stem is the language spoken by sailors and fishermen with English as their mother tongue. I like to call this subcode "sociolect" since it is not restricted to the professional sphere of those sailors and fishermen – it also influences their families` language behaviour and the English language usage along the coastlines but remains hardly accessible over long stretches to those outside these groups. This "sailor's English" as I would call it for the purpose given has very much in common with ME since it is the root of ME, but both these codes are not fully identical. One may say ME is the softened internationalized version of sailor's English with a distinct tendency towards or back to the grammatical, lexical, phonological, etc., rules of standard English.

What does that mean? Since the beginning of the 19th century English has been grown as the accepted and later as the decreed language of the sea. The reasons for that are well-known to us and need not to be enlarged upon here. The language spoken in those earlier times aboard vessels which then ruled the waves, i.e. UK and US ships, was the language used by native English speaking sailors – the sailor's English, and non-native English speaking sailors had to adopt their language behaviour and they did it; multilingual crews had not been a serious problem in those years. This situation has been essentially changing with the 60s of the 20th century when the shipping industry has not been dominating by the US and UK fleets any longer but turned to become a global business as far as the ownership of the world's merchant fleet is concerned and – most important for our subject – regarding the manning of vessels with crews speaking umpteen different languages except English. Furthermore, the development of highly sophisticated technological systems of information exchange at sea has been exercising an enormous impact upon communication behaviour and language policy.