Annual General Assembly 2003 - Alexandria

Session 3 WGIII

Maritime English - Is this the Only Way to Communicate?

Takeshi NAKAZAWA

Professor, Kobe University of Mercantile Marine
5-1-1, Fukaeminami-machi, Higashinada-ku 658-0022, Kobe, Japan
E-mail: nakazawa@cc.kshosen.ac.jp

ABSTRACT

Several discussions and investigations to develop the effective use of Maritime English have intensively made by academic staff of maritime institutions since the establishment of the Standard of Maritime Communication Phrases (SMCP). Most of the outcomes obtained are of dealing with improvement of course syllabi and teaching methods and some are of dealing with the relation between SMCP and the regulations of the STCW and the ISM code.

Is Maritime English the only way to communicate?' This question has been arising in the authors' mind since he asked himself whether non-native speakers could speak proper English even at the time of emergency in which almost all of the people involved might be in panic and chaotic situation.

In this paper, the author proposes establishing a type of non-verbal communication such like sign language as a complementary communication method, especially at the time of emergency, with introducing a sign language which used to be used in the noisy machinery space till those days of 1950s in Japan.

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