Cover not available
Article published In:
The pragmatics of professional discourse
Edited by Winnie Cheng
[Pragmatics and Society 7:1] 2016
► pp. 8–29

Flight attendant identity construction in inflight incident reports

| Founder and consultant, You Say Tomato / Visiting Research Scholar, Queen Mary, University of London
This article explores the discursive construction of a professional flight attendant (FA) identity (Bucholtz and Hall 2004) in a corpus of reports written by FAs and voluntarily submitted to a US government agency. The article argues that writing and submission of the reports by FAs can be seen as a performative act, which heightens aviation institutional ideologies whilst foregrounding safety-related practices. Moreover, the narratives make frequent use of the intersubjective relation of adequation and distinction (i.e., “us and them”) in their situated construction of identity, with FAs excluding pilots from discursive constructions of the inflight crew. This distancing of pilots is counter to the “team” ideology in commercial aviation upon which much flight safety is predicated.
Keywords: adequation, flight attendant, performative act, aviation, inflight incident reports, professional identity
Published online: 7 April 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.7.1.01cla
References (84)
Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ashcraft, Karen Lee. 2007. “Appreciating the ‘Work’ of Discourse: Occupational Identity and Difference as Organizing Mechanisms in the Case of Commercial Airline Pilots.” Discourse and Communication 1 (1): 9–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). 2012a. “About Our Staff.” ASRS. Accessed 10 August 2012. [URL].
. 2012b. “Database Online.” ASRS. Accessed 10 August 2012. [URL].
. 2012c. “Program Briefing.” ASRS. Accessed 10 August 2012. [URL].
Baker, Trudy, Rachel Jones, and Donald Bain. 2003. Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Banks, Stephen P. 1994. “Performing Public Announcements: The Case of Flight Attendants’ Work Discourse.” Text and Performance Quarterly 141: 253–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barreto, Bruno. 2003. View from the Top. Santa Monica, Calif.: Miramax Films.Google Scholar
Barrett, Rusty. 1999. “Indexing Polyphonous Identity in the Speech of African American Drag Queens.” In Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse, ed. by Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton, 313–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barry, Kathleen M. 2006. “‘Too Glamorous to be Considered Workers’: Flight Attendants and Pink-Collar Activism in Mid-Twentieth-Century America.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3 (3): 119–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baxter, Judith, and Kieran Wallace. 2009. “Outside In-Group and Out-Group Identities? Constructing Male Solidarity and Female Exclusion in UK Builders’ Talk.” Discourse & Society 20 (4): 411–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Carol, and Peter Bain. 1997. “‘Once I Get You Up There, Where the Air is Rarified’: Health, Safety and the Working Conditions of Airline Cabin Crews.” New Technology, Work and Employment 13 (1): 16–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2004. “Language and Identity.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 369–394. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chute, Rebecca D., and Earl L. Wiener. 1994. “Cockpit and Cabin Crews: Do Conflicting Mandates Put them on a Collision Course?” Flight Safety Foundation Cabin Crew Safety 29 (2): 1–8.Google Scholar
. 1995. “Cockpit/Cabin Communication: I. A Tale of Two Cultures.” International Journal of Aviation Psychology 5 (3): 257–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Barbara. 2007. “Plane Talk: Flight Attendant Identity Construction and Inter-Crew Communication.” Master’s thesis. Queen Mary, University of London.
. 2013a. “Flight Attendants Talking about Pilots: What Qualitative Discourse Analysis Can Tell Us About Intercrew Relations.” Presented at the 7th Triennial FAA International Fire & Cabin Safety Research Conference , Philadelphia.
. 2013b. “Safety Talk and Service Culture: Flight Attendant Discourse in Commercial Aviation.” Ph.D. dissertation. Queen Mary, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
. 2014. “The Perfect World of Training and the Imperfect Realities of Aviation.” Presented at EATS 2014: European Aviation Training Symposium , Berlin.
Cotter, Colleen. 2010. News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cotter, Colleen, and Daniel Marschall. 2006. “The Persistence of Workplace Ideology and Identity Across Communicative Contexts.” Journal of Applied Linguistics 3 (1): 1–24.Google Scholar
de Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg (eds). 2006. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro. 1992. “Language in Context and Language as Context: The Samoan Respect Vocabulary.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 77–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, and Charles Goodwin (eds). 1992. Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dyer, Judy, and Deborah Keller-Cohen. 2000. “The Discursive Construction of Professional Self Through Narratives of Personal Experience.” Discourse Studies 2 (3): 283–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. “Variation and the Indexical Field.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4): 453–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)2003. “Standard Operating Procedures for Flight Deck Crewmembers, Appendix 17: Crew Briefings. Advisory Circular 120–71A (effective 27 February 2003).” Accessed 13 August 2012. [URL].
. 2004. “Crew Resource Management Training. Advisory Circular 120–51E (effective 22 January 2004).” Accessed 13 August 2012. [URL].
Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference.” Social Research 62 (4): 967–1001.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2011. “‘On for Drinkies?’: Email Cues of Participant Alignments.” Language@Internet 81: article 4. Accessed December 30, 2012. [URL].Google Scholar
Glitsch, Ulrich, Hans Jürgen Ottersback, Rolf Ellegast, Karlheinz Schaub, Gerhard Franz, and Matthias Jäger. 2007. “Physical Workload of Flight Attendants When Pushing and Pulling Trolleys Aboard Aircraft.” International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 371: 845–854. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goguen, Joseph A., and Charlotte Linde. 1983. “Linguistic Methodology for the Analysis of Aviation Accidents.” Moffett Field, Calif: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Branch.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie Harness Goodwin. 1990. “Interstitial Argument.” In Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversations, ed. by Allen Grimshaw, 85–117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1992. “Contextualization and Understanding.” In Rethinking Context, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J., and Dell Hymes (eds). 1986. Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication.Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Halbe, Dorothea. 2011. “Language in the Military Workplace: Between Hierarchy and Politeness.” Text & Talk 31 (3): 315–334. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heath, Shirley Brice. 2012. Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Helmreich, Robert L., and Ashleigh C. Merritt. 1998. Culture at Work in Aviation and Medicine: National, Organizational, and Professional Influences. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Helmreich, Robert L., Ashleigh C. Merritt, and John A. Wilhelm. 1999. “The Evolution of Crew Resource Management Training in Commercial Aviation.” International Journal of Aviation Psychology 9 (1): 19–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2003. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Twentieth Anniversary Edition). Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet. 2006. Gendered Talk at Work. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, and Meredith Marra. 2005. “Narrative and the Construction of Professional Identity in the Workplace.” In The Sociolinguistics of Narrative, ed. by Joanna Thornborrow and Jennifer Coates, 193–213. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, and Maria Stubbe. 2003. Power and Politeness in the Workplace. Harlow: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
. 1986. “Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 35–71. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Ways of Speaking.” In Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 158–171. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2009. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 402–434. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kanki, Barbara, Robert Helmreich, and José Anca (eds). 2010. Crew Resource Management. San Diego: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Shari. 2008. “The Balancing Act: Framing Gendered Parental Identities at Dinnertime.” Language in Society 371: 539–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiesling, Scott F. 2001. “‘Now I Gotta Watch What I Say’: Shifting Constructions of Masculinity in Discourse.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11 (2): 250–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Dude.” American Speech 79 (3): 281–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. “The Social Motivation of a Sound Change.” Word 191: 273–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, and Joshua Waletzky. 2003. “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience.” In Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings, ed. by Christine Bratt Paulston and G. Richard Tucker, 74–104. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Linde, Charlotte. 1988. “The Quantitative Study of Communicative Success: Politeness and Accidents in Aviation Discourse.” Language in Society 17 (3): 375–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “Narrative in Institutions.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 518–535. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McElhinny, Bonnie. 1995. “Challenging Hegemonic Masculinities: Female and Male Police Officers Handling Domestic Violence.” In Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, ed. by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz, 217–243. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1998. “‘I Don’t Smile Much Anymore’: Affect, Gender, and the Discourse of Pittsburgh Police Officers.” In Language and Gender: A Reader, ed. by Jennifer Coates, 309–327. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Theorizing Gender in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology.” In The Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff, 21–42. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2011. “The Semiotic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Creaky Voice: Circulation and Gendered Hardcore in a Chicana/o Gang Persona.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21 (2): 261–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moles, Elizabeth R., and Norman L. Friedman. 1973. “The Airline Hostess: Realities of an Occupation with a Popular Culture Image.” Journal of Popular Culture 7 (2): 305–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mullany, Louise. 2007. Gendered Discourse in the Professional Workplace. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Alexandra G. 1998. “Hidden Transcripts of Flight Attendant Resistance.” Management Communication Quarterly 11 (4): 499–535. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. “Organizational Politics of Place and Space: The Perpetual Liminoid Performance of Commercial Flight.” Text and Performance Quarterly 22 (4): 297–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevile, Maurice. 2004. Beyond the Black Box: Talk-in-Interaction in the Airline Cockpit. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor. 1992. “Indexing Gender.” In Rethinking Context, ed. by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Okamoto, Shigeko, and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith (eds). 2004. Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, Douglas. 2007. Jeff’s Way.Lincoln, Nebr.: iUniverse.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1993. “‘Speaking for Another’ in Sociolinguistic Interviews: Alignments, Identities, and Frames.” In Framing in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 231–263. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2006. In Other Words: Variation in Reference and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schnurr, Stephanie. 2009. “Constructing Leader Identities through Teasing at Work.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1125–1138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (ed.). 1993. Framing in Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah, and Cynthia Wallat. 1993. “Interactive Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination/Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thornborrow, Joanna, and Jennifer Coates (eds). 2005. The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trester, Anna Marie. 2009. “Discourse Marker ‘Oh’ as a Means for Realizing the Identity Potential of Constructed Dialogue in Interaction.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (2): 147–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tyler, Melissa, and Pamela Abbott. 1998. “Chocs Away: Weight Watching in the Contemporary Airline Industry.” Sociology 32 (3): 433–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitelegg, Drew. 2007. Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Claire. 2003. “Sky Service: The Demands of Emotional Labour in the Airline Industry.” Gender , Work and Organization 10 (5): 513–550. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Blitvich, Pilar Garcés-Conejos & Alex Georgakopoulou
2021. Analysing Identity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 293 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.