“Plane” Language: (one of) ITA Trainers’ Challenges

Dr. Roger W. Anderson, Monterey, California, USA

“Plane” language

On a recent flight, I was woken by the brusque sound of the flight attendant.

“Cookies or pretzels? And to drink?”

She minimized words, presumably knowing that she would repeat the same two questions to dozens of passengers. It was her next question that was intriguing.

“Ice?"

“Please,” I said when it was my turn.

Soft drinks and pretzels or cookies were free, but alcoholic beverages or premium snacks came at a charge.

A woman in the row behind me asked for a mixed drink, responding to the flight attendant’s standard two questions.

Rather than “Ice?,” she said, “On the rocks?." Her voice loud enough to awake any sleeping passenger, I noticed that she repeated this trend for each customer ordering an alcoholic drink.

Both types of passengers were receiving the exact same substance—ice in their beverage—yet it was being called by two different monikers by the same flight attendant. Why?

Because alcohol-drinking comes with its own vocabulary and culture, is that different from, and potentially, above that of mere soft-drink consumers? Because if you are a paying client, are you entitled to a specialized lexicon? Presumably the latter, in the same way that passengers, all of whom purchased a ticket, do not produce “garbage” that flight attendants collect, but rather “service items” that will be collected. Neither do valued customers get on and get off a plane, but rather they “board” and “de-plane”.

I also noticed that one presumably non-English speaker seated somewhere behind me, was not prepared to be asked about wanting “ice” or not, or didn’t understand the question, and a small but awkward miscommunication ensued.

ITA’s microteachings: the nexus of clashing lexicons

Re-reading my dissertation journal that I kept when simultaneously researching ITAs and teaching a separate cohort of ITAs, I noticed a similar phenomenon that I had recorded.

During individual tutorials to review ITA’s micro teachings on environmental policy, a student had mentioned an “exclusive list.” I began to point out that she meant an “exclusion” list, or a list of elements not allowed. I suggested to her that the word she used, “exclusive,” was not the one she wanted or was taking on a meaning that she didn’t intend. Something “exclusive” is usually something of rare occurrence or high value. The speaker was a very strong speaker, and so I was able to focus on these higher-level aspects of her lesson. She contested me saying that the law itself refers to this list as an “exclusive list,” meaning a list that enumerates exclusions, and thus she cannot rename the list.

I then realized what was going on: a term which has currency in daily life, a term that is non-technical language, has taken on a slightly different meaning within her academic field, the field of environmental policy.

Apologizing and thanking her for the clarification, I explained that this points to a conundrum of what we are doing in an ITA training class-- we are doing micro-teachings for “students” – peer ITAs—who are not studying the same academic discipline or field. In the future, undergraduate students under their instruction may be more familiar with such terms, but ultimately they would be benefitting from the cumulative nature of classes—in which knowledge is accumulating, compared to the isolated nature of our micro-teachings.

I suggested that this difference in terms also points to the need to adapt language for different audiences. If she thinks her audience is familiar/conversant with technical terms, no problem. Yet being the only participant in this field amongst our classmates, she would have to accommodate her audience. It is unknown if she in fact was aware of the slight difference in meanings between this common term and that which it takes on when used in her field.

This is to say then that ITAs who have studied the technical terms of their field without much exposure to the language of daily life used by average Americans, they may not be aware of the relationships (closeness to, distance from, variant meanings of, etc.) between these technical terms from their field and the plain meaning of term used in non-technical scenarios.

Ultimately, I understood microteaching to be the nexus of (or point of collision of):

• the layman’s use of the term
• the technical/field-specific use of the term
• the ITA's familiarity (or lack of) of both uses of the term
• the ITA’s perception of their future students’ familiarity with the term
• the ITA’s perception of this same familiarity but of the students currently in front of her
• the ITA’s perception of the task at hand
• and of course, the ITA trainer’s perception of each of these components and his view of his role in this event.

Summary: “Ice?,” “On the Rocks?,” and the Competence to Deploy them Correctly

All told, micro-teachings in an ITA training class facilitate the convergence and/or collision of many registers of language, all within one English language. This demonstrates that ITA educators must be language detectives. While it is impossible for ITA educators to learn even the basics of every field in which their ITAs are enrolled, it will be necessary to tease apart the common usages and technical usages of a term and ascertain the difference between them. If not, confusion will ensue—for the undergraduate student under the ITA’s instruction. Just as “ice” and “on the rocks” refer to a singular referent, passengers would likely giggle if asked if they would like their Diet Coke “on the rocks.” Equipping a flight attendant-trainee with this linguistic nuance is not dissimilar from the work of ITA educators. If only it were confined to the lexicon of airplane refreshments…

Roger W. Anderson, PhD, is an independent scholar living in Monterey, California (USA). He earned a Ph.D. in Foreign/Second Language Education from Ohio State University, Master’s degrees in African Studies and French from Ohio University, and in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language from Middlebury College. Roger believes that a global education must include international language study and development of intercultural competence. His research focuses on identity and investment in second language acquisition, la Francophonie, Arabic language education, and the internationalization of higher education. In his free time, he enjoys being outdoors and learning new world languages.