Linguistic peculiarities of English civil aviation texts

Mel'dianova Anna Valer'evna PhD in Philology Associate Professor of the Department of Language and Translation Studies at Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University) 125993, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Volokolamskoe Shosse, 4 meldianova_av@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Bogdanovskii Grigorii Vladimirovich Master's degree; Institute of Foreign Languages; Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University) 125993, Russia, Moscow, Volokolamsk highway, 4 ggreee_1@mail.ru

Introduction

The relevance of the current scientific research is conditioned by the growing interest in the aviation industry worldwide, and, accordingly, an increase in the number and importance of scientific and technical literature in this area. Scientific and technical texts have been subject to analysis and research for a long time. Their semantic and structural characteristics have been subject to research in the works of many Russian and foreign linguists, such as N. M. Razinkina ^[1], Y. I. Retsker ^[2], G. M. Strelkovskiy ^[3], S. A. Khomenko ^[4], J. Byrne ^[5] and many others. But their use in English aviation texts is not studied to a full extent.

Grammar and vocabulary peculiarities in scientific and technical texts on aviation have not been studied enough, which further increases the importance of research in this sphere.

The aim of this scientific research is to reveal the linguistic characteristics of scientific and technical texts, namely texts related to civil aviation.

The current article provides a general description of scientific and technical texts on civil aviation, presents a detailed analysis of their linguistic features, vocabulary, terminology, stylistics, and the possibility of fast and effective information communication.

The excerpts from the report "Transportation Research Board Special Report 16" are taken as the basis for linguistic analysis.

Lexico-grammatical features of scientific style texts

The scientific style as a whole is characterized by a consistent and cohesive presentation of the material, by clear causative-consecutive connections as well as accuracy, clarity, objectiveness of the author to the facts, information richness. All these stylistic features of the scientific style are achieved by certain linguistic means (lexical and grammatical).

Lexical peculiarities of scientific prose include high frequency of general technical vocabulary, as well as terms.

Among the grammatical syntactic features inherent to a scientific and technical text it is necessary to note the complexity and diversity of syntactic structures. These structures are complicated, though rather concise.

The aspiration to convey information more fully leads to the creation of long and structurally complex sentences with several subordinate clauses and various means of connection inside. The needs of communication and interaction lead to the emergence of complex syntactic structures in the language that combine several sentences, while the structure of such complex sentences is not a simple sum of their constituent elements ^{[6, p. 172]}.

When translating such sentences, the interpreter should be able to analyze the structure, identify compositional and subordinate relationships, and understand the role of connective words (in particular, prepositions and conjunctions) that link words or parts of a complex sentence or sentences ^{[7, p. 160]}.

Among the characteristic morphological peculiarities of scientific and technical contexts we should mention the frequent use of phrases with non-finite verbal forms – infinitive, gerundial and participial constructions. The brevity of the presentation is achieved, for example, by using the infinitive in the certain function, which is most often translated in Russian by a definitive subordinate clause with a hint of future time.

Another grammatical morphological feature of a scientific and technical text is the widespread use of impersonal structures. Personal pronouns are relatively rare in the function of the subject in the sentence. Such texts are depersonalized and are aimed at creating an effect of objectivity by pushing the author's personality into the background. The widespread use of passive constructions also serves to this aim. Since the scientific and technical text mainly contains a description of processes or facts, the author focuses attention not on the agent, but on these processes and facts. Mainly present simple verbal tense forms are predominant in scientific prose, which helps to present the reported information as absolutely objective and timeless.

The brevity of the presentation is also achieved by a large number of attributive constructions, as they help to ensure the compactness of the information presentation. The difficulty in finding the equivalent of such phrases in the translating language is explained by the complex nature of subordinative relationships within the attributive group ^{[7, с. 162]}.

Stylistic peculiarities of civil aviation texts

The mentioned above stylistic peculiarities of scientific prose (expressed by certain lexico-grammatical means) will be further presented more in detail on the example of civil aviation texts.

Logical coherence

To achieve consistency and logical presentation of the material in civil aviation texts both simple sentences with introductory words and phrases (such as, however, on the one hand, according to); infinitive, participial and gerundial phrases; extended attributive groups and complex sentences are employed. Conjunctions indicating a subordinative connection between sentences (such as, because, although, therefore, while, despite the fact that) are quite common in texts on civil aviation:

"Although minimum standards are optional, the FAA highly recommends their use and implementation as a means to minimize the potential for violations of federal obligations at federally obligated airports" ^[8].

Introductory words and phrases as well as conjunctions help to link parts of the text, making it easier for the reader to perceive.

A scientific text is usually logically constructed, that is, it has a good structure with signs of transition from one part to another, being based on the principle of consistent presentation of arguments. Each sentence is logically related to the preceding one and the following one.

Logical coherence of civil aviation texts is expressed by various lexical and grammatical means both within the whole text and in a separate sentence, such as:

- pronominal substitutes, which replace other words or parts of the text:

"While no commercial service airports were recommended as candidates by state agencies for the industry survey, eight of the non-hub primary airports included in the survey had fewer than 20,000 annual enplanements, which is at the small end of non-hub primary airports, because the lower limit for a primary airport is 10,000 enplanements" ^[8].

"Which" in the above-mentioned sentence refers to the entire previous statement, describing the number of flights from commercial airports.

- ellipsis, which is understood as the omission of a word or phrase that can be easily restored from the context, for example:

"Contains policy and procedures for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by the FAA and implementing regulations issued by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)" ^[8].

The subject in the sentence above is missing. It is omitted in the sentence, but can be easily understood from the context.

- substitution of a word or an entire phrase with another word, similar in meaning, as in the given below example:

"The Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) serves as one of the principal means by which the airport industry can develop innovative near-term solutions to meet demands placed on it" ^[8].

In this case, "one" replaces the word "program" and helps to avoid unnecessary repetitions. In addition to "one", other substitution words can be used: "ones", "do", "so", "not", etc.

- connectors, including conjunctions and conjunctive words, which serve not only to connect the subordinate clause with the main one, but also indicate the type of connection (causal, determinative, conditional, etc.).

- lexical synonymy, when the same idea is conveyed in different words using synonyms that are close in meaning, as in the example below:

"During the 30-day survey period, 114 small airport managers responded to the survey for a 35 percent response rate. The respondent sample group exhibited the general demographic features and geographical characteristics of the surveyed sample group, described further in the following section" ^[8].

In this case, nouns features/characteristics are used as means of lexical synonymy.

Nominativity

This stylistic peculiarity of civil aviation texts finds its realization mainly on the lexical level. This peculiarity lies in the fact that in modern scientific-style writing a tendency has developed towards greater use of nouns and relatively less use of verbs.

The scientific aviation texts are abundant in abstract nouns. This can be explained by the fact that when considering the problem, the author first studies the general concept and only then proceeds to concretization.

Accuracy as one of the components of scientific style is manifested in the widespread use of special vocabulary and terminology, especially found in many languages and considered international (such as airport, section, sponsor, expert, manager, function, operation, transfer, etc). Besides, when referring to statistics, accurate figures and facts are often used:

"Conditional, unconditional, or mixed approval of an airport sponsor’s request under 49 USC, section 47125, to use or transfer Federally-owned land to carry out an action under 49 USC Chapter 471, Subchapter I, at a public-use airport or to support the airport's operations" ^[8].

Impersonal manner of narration

Scientific style texts, as well as texts on civil aviation, are not characterized by subjective judgments, which are used mainly to express the author's personal point of view, such as in my opinion, to my mind, etc. On the contrary, this style is characterized by an impersonal manner of narration, due to the fact that the main focus is made not on the personality of the author and his opinion, but on facts, information and arguments. In this regard, impersonal sentences such as It is known that ... It should be mentioned that … are often found.

In addition, it is customary to avoid using personal pronouns of the 1st and 2nd person singular. At the same time, it is possible to use personal pronouns of the 1st person in the plural.

Passive constructions are prevalent to form impersonal sentences, where the subject of the action is not important.

Nevertheless, the author sometimes needs to express his attitude to what is narrated in the text, at least in a hidden form. For example, one of these means is hedging, that is, softening the response, avoiding a direct answer. Hedging allows the author to express his feelings, his personal attitude to what is happening, to give his assessment of the situation, to make predictions for the future, although not very openly.

According to I. Vasilyeva, in Modern English the number of such limiters indicating the degree of detachment of the author is much greater than in other languages ^{[9, p. 88]}. D. Bieber adheres to the point of view that a person's opinion can be expressed either with the help of certain grammatical and lexical means, for example, due to structures and words rendering value judgments; or by using non-linguistic means of speech communication, such pauses, facial expressions and gestures ^{[10, p. 966-969]}.

Objectivity and formality in aviation texts is achieved by missing one of the following elements:

- informal words and expressions,

- contracted forms such as: can't, mustn't, info, no, etc.

- phrasal verbs,

- idioms,

- direct questions to the reader.

At the same time, the civil aviation texts under consideration are characterized by the use of:

- formal and, in some texts, neutral vocabulary (for example: to analyze, to study, to research, advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons, etc.),

- formal grammar, for example impersonal and introductory structures,

- hedging,

- modal verbs such as can, might, must,

- adverbs (apparently, evidently, seemingly, etc.),

- verbs (seem to/ appear, etc.).

Conciseness and Informative value

A scientific text, as a rule, has great informative value, because it is usually formed in the situations when there is time to think about and comprehend the material.

With all the information richness, the text related to the scientific and technical style, including civil aviation text, is characterized by the conciseness of the presentation of the material or compression, which is achieved due to certain syntactic constructions:

- noun phrases,

- attributive combinations,

- substitutions of subordinate clauses with participial or infinitive constructions,

- sentences with prepositions,

- appositions.

Conclusion

Summing up, it should be noted, that over time specific lexico-grammatical forms have appeared in the English language aimed at compiling with the basic principles of scientific discourse.

The detailed analysis of the stylistic features of the civil aviation texts revealed that these texts are characterized by consistent and cohesive presentation of the material with the presence of strong consecutive relations, as well as accuracy, clarity, objective attitude of the author to facts, information richness, which is expressed by various lexical, morphological and syntactical means. These means may not have direct analogues in the translating language thus causing difficulties in translating specialized texts and due to this requiring special professional skills from translators. In this regard, representatives of other countries should be especially attentive to the ways of expressing scientific style in English in order to feel quite competitive at the international market.