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

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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

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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:

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- 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 20 th
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

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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.

Nowadays just less than 1 out of 10 ship's officers is a so-called English L-1 speaker. But the
English language which has proved to be a reliable and efficient medium of maritime
communication has not been abandoned, quite the contrary, it has been institutionalized, and
it has got step by step under the influence of sailors and other maritime personnel speaking
this English subcode as a foreign language. The vast majority of the characteristics of sailor's
English has been vital enough to survive and keep on serving as reliable means of
communication. Quite a few others, however, have been assimilated and returned, if I may
say so, to received standards of English. This tendency is still gaining headway and has as far
as ME instruction is concerned, at least one advantageous aspect: It seems to be by far easier
to establish criteria for a, say, a received ME standard, i.e. sort of yardstick to determine what
is correct ME, what is acceptable, what is still tolerable and what is unacceptable or wrong, to
undertake that for sailor's English is simply not practicable.

I will give you a few examples from the vast field of phonetics where traditional sailor's
English pronunciation did not win through in ME, i.e. where standard pronunciation also
became the habit with ME:

Standard spelling Sailors` English pronunciation ME pronunciation

bowsprit `bauspri:t bausprit

captain kæpn `kæp,tin

foremast `fo:m∂st `fo:,ma:st

lee / leeward lju: / `lju:∂d li: / `li:w∂d

let go `le,gou `let`gou

mainsail `meinsl `mein,seil

northeast `no:r`i:st `no:θ`i:st

starboard abeam `sta:b∂`bi:m `sta:b∂d∂`bi:m

windward `wind∂d `windw∂d

And here are some further examples taken from the field of terminology, in this case from
phrasal verbs:

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Sailors` English Maritime English

sail down re-gain (distance)

make for steer for

put off / forth depart

put in enter

put down turn into the wind

ship on / off sign on / off

roll home inward bound

And also the use of internationalisms/Latinisms instead of Germanic or other genuine English
terms has to be regarded that way, for example:
I require assistance instead of
I need help.
The same is true for the ongoing transfer of the traditionally applied female gender for vessel
into the neutral gender, i.e. it for she. These were just a very few from a wide field of
hundreds of instances. No chance, however, had so far even directive attempts to replace port
/ starboard for left / right, apart from the US Navy and vessels under US pilotage on the Great
Lakes where it had been done without any danger to navigation.

To sum this up: Under the influence of the vast majority of sailors speaking English as a
foreign language in the world's merchant fleet the traditional sailor's English has been
mutating there to a version being closer to standard English what is called ME now.
However, many features of this traditional sailor's English have been preserved also in ME. If
you wish to hear or enjoy sailor's English, sign on a UK coaster with UK crew – if you will
find one – or just turn on one of the local VHF stations providing information for inshore
fisheries and trading along the coasts of the UK or read again the books of the famous Polish
or English writer Joseph Conrad.

In this connection I just want to touch another problem involving our teaching: If ME is used,
i.e. spoken almost exclusively by non-native English speaking ship's officers or other
maritime personnel on the oceans and in harbours so that our graduates will happen to meet a
native speaker on ships` bridges, on VHF or in another maritime environment more or less
accidentally, what then is an authentic text in spoken ME? There is neither place nor time to
go into detail – I did it on another occasion (Trenkner 1988) – that is why I will try to give a
probably unsatisfying answer by quoting two authorities:

K. Morrow (1977) said: "An authentic text is a stretch of real language produced by a real
speaker ... for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort." And D.
Byrne (1980) wrote: "The principal objective of the listening comprehension programme
should be to train the students to understand, and respond appropriately to the kind of
language they are most likely to hear in normal use." (Byrne 1980). My question is, must
authentic ME be the received standard of English? Answer pending for the time being.

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So, after having considered what ME is I will accomplish my presentation pointing out what
ME should do, or what the task of ME should be in my understanding since I regard this to be
an indispensable part of the definition I have in mind.

ME with its specific and efficient means has to contribute to the safety of navigation and to
the facilitation – one could also say organization – of the seaborne business. These two
fundamental communication areas are the two major fields of activities of those involved in
seafaring. This again reflects the close ties of acting in a specific professional sphere to the
communication applied there. Both these components form an indissoluble complex and may
not do one without the other.

On quite a number of occasions at GAME and IMLA workshops we have dealt with these
fields in detail, we have considered, reconsidered, broken down and categorized them, and we
have noticed as an appreciable side effect that what we found is in full compliance with the
STCW Convention, 1978 as revised (Trenkner 1998). That is why I will only name the
essential main items of both the complexes without going into further detail. The main
communication area of safety of navigation covers communicatively relevant fields involving
Ship Operation (navigation/technical operation, VTS/pilotage, meteorology) and Safety
(accidents/emergencies, safety drills, SAR, environmental protection). The second, i.e.
seaborne business, covers fields such as Ship Management (port routine, cargo works, ship
servicing) and Commercial Operation of the vessel including its legal aspects. Here,
considerably less than in the first complex, we find overlappings with communication areas
which are not specifically maritime. One of the conclusions to be drawn from this paragraph
is that the linguistic and above all the communicative requirements of other maritime subjects
have to be determined, i.e. a detailed communication needs analysis carried out and Maritime
English instruction performed across the MET curriculum.

If I were to put into one sentence all that what I have enlarged upon in my contribution, this
sentence would read like this and is the definition of ME which helped my a lot in my
teaching and research activities:

MARITIME ENGLISH IS THE ENTIRETY OF ALL THOSE MEANS OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE WHICH BEING USED AS A DEVICE FOR
COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE INTERNATIONAL MARITIME COMMUNITY
CONTRIBUTE TO THE SAFETY OF NAVIGATION AND THE
FACILITATION OF THE SEABORNE BUSINESS

To finish with: There is neither place nor time to consider in greater detail the consequences
from this definition with regard to methods of Maritime English instruction in classroom.
That is why I will restrict myself to just point out the following – in my opinion – logical
conclusion:

The most appropriate method of teaching Maritime English in the spirit of the definition
mentioned above is the so-called communicative approach, i.e. to instruct Maritime English in
any of its aspects answering the question: "How can I, the Maritime English lecturer, teach
this subject to make my students communicate according to the different requirements they
will have to meet within the fields of their responsibilities as ship's officers."

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References

Byrne, D. Teaching Oral English, Harlow 1980, p. 13

McDonough, J. ESP in Perspective, London & Glasgow 1984
Morrow, K. Authentic Texts and ESP, in: Holden, S. et al, ESP, London 1977, p. 13
Trenkner, P. Einsatz authentischer Tondokumente in der Ausbildung im Maritimen Englisch,
Berlin 1988
Trenkner, P. The Suitability of the IMO-SMCP for a Maritime English Syllabus, in
Proceedings WOME 1A Oct. 11 -16, 1998, Shanghai 1998, pp 3-28
Trenkner, P./Nielsen, D. A Method for the Acquisition of Statistical Data on Maritime
English Communication Deficiencies, Hong Kong 1998