An Overview of the Theoretical Underpinnings of the Study

The theories on Linguistic Discourse Analysis, Speech Acts, and Standard Information serve as the foundation of the study.

As a start, getting an understanding of what discourse analysis begins with knowing what a discourse is and what an analysis is, provides a useful idea of specifying the difference of discourse analysis from other approaches to language study. To discourse analysts, discourse means actual instances of communication (What is Discourse Analysis, 2005). Sharma & Sharma (2010) articulating that discourse is the creation and organization of the segments of a language above as well as below the sentence put forward the idea that discourse applies to both spoken and written language, in fact to any sample of language used for any purpose. Linguistics analysis in this vein is a process of taking apart. So discourse analysts often find it useful to divide longer stretches of discourse into parts according to who is talking. Questions like “Are grammatical patterns different when social superiors are talking than when their subordinates are? Does new information tend to come in the first sentence of a paragraph? Are topic changes signalled by special markers? can be asked in this manner.

In the application of discourse analysis in both written and spoken language, it can be said that as Sharma and Sharma (2010) advance, traditional linguistics has concentrated on sentence-centered analysis. Now, linguists are much more concerned with the way language is “used” than what its components are. It is in this notion that the present study gives much emphasis on how the linguistic structures that are over and beyond sentence segments occur relative to each other in the analysis of maritime communications. Stubbs (1983 in Sharma & Sharma 2010) says that any study which is not dealing with (a) single sentences, (b) contrived by the linguist, (c) out of context, may be called discourse analysis. In other words for Sharma & Sharma (2010) there is now a shift of focus from sentences in isolation to utterances in context: to study language in use is to study it as discourse. This shows that knowledge of a language is more than knowledge of individual sentences (Leech 2008 in Sharma & Sharma 2010).For them the true meaning of a sentence for them cannot be assigned by its only linguistic construction but it largely depends on reference (meaning in relation to exterior world), sense (meaning in relation to linguistic system) and force (meaning in relation to situation context). McCarthy (1991 in Madrunio 2004) states that discourse analysis encompasses both the written and spoken discourse therefore both take on varied functions such as giving information, establishing social relationships, and eliciting an action from the listener. Further he claims that with such functions as request, instruction or exemplification, the focus is on what the language does and how the listener should react. For these reasons, they are called speech acts.

Meanwhile, Chapelle (1998) punctuates that language is a systemic resource for expressing meaning in context and linguistics, and Halliday (1985) likewise points out is the study of how people exchange meanings through the use of language. This view of language as a system for meaning potential, for Chapelle (1998), implies that language is not just a “the set of all grammatical sentences”, and therefore must be studied in contexts such as professional settings, classrooms, and language tests. Since language is viewed as semiotic potential, Chapelle points out further that the description of language is a description of choice, hence, systemic linguists chart their analyses by diagramming the choices language users can make in a given setting to realize a particular linguistic product. In similar vein, Verschueren (1999) surmises that language involves the continuous making of linguistic choices, consciously or unconsciously for language-internal (i.e. structural) and/or language-external reasons. These choices, he says, can be situated at any level of linguistic form: phonetic/phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantics. Likewise, Chapelle emphasizes that the unit of analysis is the text because the functional meaning potential of language is realized in units no smaller than text, and for her the study of texts is typically performed by examining the elements of the lexicogrammar and phonology, however these smaller units must be viewed from the perspective of their contribution to the meanings expressed by the total text in context.

The aforesaid, therefore, confirm the fact that discourse analysis as Demo (2001) asserts does not look outside of the text for meaning, but on the relationship between texts and with all discourse that exists simultaneously and has come before. For him, this is an examination of language used by members of a speech community (as such the international maritime community in the present study), where it involves looking at both language form and language function which deals with the study of both spoken interaction (the focus of the study) and written texts. In such a manner, discourse analysis identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in the interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talks. Since identifying the linguistic features as well as the social and cultural factors are so central in the analysis of maritime communications in ensuring safety of navigation at sea, the linguistic discourse analysis approach specifically is adopted as a model of analysis.

It has been advanced that linguistic discourse analysis does not solely focus on sentences in isolation as practiced by traditional linguists but now the practice is how these sentences make meaning in connection with the other sentences in the surrounding text. So the analysis of this sort (the linguistic discourse analysis approach) as employed in the study explores the linguistic characteristics of the spoken discourse as bases for analyzing the linguistic choices seafarers shall use in maritime communications. These linguistic characteristics (as discussed by Sharma & Sharma 2010) in focus are:

1. Simplicity of structure. Simplicity and complexity of structures are marked by the subordination of