“Advise When Ready for Game Plan”: Military Target Language Use – The Case of Directing Close Air Support

This study addresses an under-explored aspect of military English: joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) target language use (TLU). While previous research has investigated general language proficiency requirements and JTACs’ test results, little attention has been paid to determining the features that distinguish JTAC spoken exchanges from general English speech. Our study presents distinct features of their professional language use, demonstrating how JTAC talk-in-interaction constitutes a unique construct. Thirty Norwegian JTACs answered a questionnaire on which tasks they use spoken English for at work, on the balance between functional and advanced proficiency, and on the role of specific-purpose language. Questionnaire findings were complemented by lexical analyses of transcripts from JTACs directing close air support (CAS), which were compared to transcribed authentic output from general language oral proficiency interviews. Results showed JTAC spoken TLU tasks to be predominantly military specific, with protocol and domain-specific lexis, including abbreviations, brevity words, and standard phraseology, playing complementary roles. Analyses of CAS transcripts showed that JTACs use short, lexically dense sentences containing many nouns, but very few adverbs, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs, creating marked differences between JTAC TLU and general English speech. We find JTAC TLU to be a construct distinct from general English, suggesting general language level descriptors to be inadequate for assessing the oral proficiency of JTACs if one should wish to assess their professional spoken language use.