Towards an Integrated Model for the Understanding of Communication Failures in Aviation Accidents : Tenuous Identities under Pressure

This chapter focuses on a peculiar kind of professional interactions, those involving pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCs), where participants’ individual identities are undefined and unstable, as actors participate in them only through their voices, with hardly any other situational element to rely on, and have to deal with ever different interlocutors. Thus, their identities within the interaction are determined exclusively by their use of language and discourse. Of course, this problematic communicative situation is not unique to pilots and ATCs, but also applies to some other professional categories, e.g. call centre workers and helpline call operators. However, these peculiarities are much more critical in the case of aviation communication, not only because every new conversation involves an effort of recontextualization on the part of pilots, but above all because the decisions made under such demanding circumstances are highly momentous, and misunderstandings may have fatal consequences. Thus, issues relating to professional encounters relying exclusively on verbal exchanges are highly relevant to the study of communication failures in aviation accidents, which are the main object of investigation in this chapter. We propose an integrated model for their analysis where considerations concerning interactional circumstances and linguistic exchanges are given pride of place.