37.2102, Reviews: Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca: Hyejeong Kim (2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2102. Wed Jun 17 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2102, Reviews: Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca: Hyejeong Kim (2026)

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Date: 17-Jun-2026
From: Yakubu Bitrus [ybitrus at gmail.com]
Subject: Hyejeong Kim (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-1149

Title: Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca
Series Title: Elements in Applied Linguistics
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/applied-linguistics-and-second-language-acquisition/aviation-english-global-lingua-franca?format=HB&isbn=9781009660754

Author(s): Hyejeong Kim

Reviewer: Yakubu Bitrus

SUMMARY
Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca is a concise scholarly
monograph published as part of Cambridge University Press's Elements
in Applied Linguistics series. Authored by Hyejeong Kim of The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, the work brings together more than
fifteen years of the author's sustained research program on
radiotelephony communication between pilots and air traffic
controllers (ATCs) in international aviation contexts. The Element
examines the nature, challenges, and policy implications of English
when it functions as a global lingua franca (ELF) in one of the
world's highest-stakes communication environments.
The organizing theoretical framework is Wenger's (1998) communities of
practice (CoP), a concept that foregrounds the socially situated
nature of learning, identity, and communicative repertoire. Kim argues
that pilots and ATCs involved in international operations belong
simultaneously to multiple overlapping communities: their local
professional community (e.g., a specific airline or ATC center), a
broader local aviation community shaped by national regulatory and
linguistic norms, and the overarching international aviation community
governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The
linguistic repertoire that aviation professionals develop and the
miscommunications that emerge are, Kim contends, best understood
through this multi-layered community membership rather than through
the lens of individual English proficiency alone.
Against this theoretical backdrop, the Element unfolds in a coherent
progression. Kim first establishes the sociolinguistic context of
aviation English by situating it within the broader ELF research
tradition, drawing on foundational work by Seidlhofer (2004, 2011) and
others who challenged native-speaker-centric norms in global English
use. She then presents a historically grounded critique of ICAO's
Language Proficiency Requirements (LPRs), introduced in 2003 and
mandating Operational Level 4 on the ICAO Rating Scale as the minimum
acceptable standard for pilots and controllers engaged in
international operations. Crucially, Kim interrogates the equity
dimensions of these requirements: native English speakers are not
subject to the same testing obligations, a disparity that Kim and
Elder (2009) had earlier identified as inconsistent with an ELF
framework.
A central analytical move in the Element is an examination of four
notable aircraft accidents whose investigation reports cited
language-related communication failures as contributing factors. These
case studies serve to contextualize the policy landscape and to
motivate the LPRs historically, but Kim uses them critically to reveal
the gap between the policy's framing of the problem which tends to
locate the source of communication failure in the non-native speaker's
proficiency deficit, and an ELF-informed understanding of aviation
communication as an interactional achievement requiring resources
beyond language proficiency.
The empirical core of the Element involves analysis of live
radiotelephony discourse recorded during abnormal situations,
non-routine, emergency, or high-workload exchanges that place maximum
demands on communicative resources. This analysis is enriched by
incorporating the evaluative commentaries of domain specialists,
allowing Kim to triangulate discourse-analytic findings with expert
practitioner judgment. A key finding, consistent with Kim and Friginal
(2026), is that language-related factors alone are insufficient to
account for effective or ineffective aviation communication: limited
domain knowledge, when combined with language difficulties, can
produce unsafe and communicatively ineffective outcomes. This finding
positions the book's argument squarely against a purely
proficiency-centric view of aviation communication competence.
The Element concludes by synthesizing its theoretical, critical, and
empirical strands into recommendations for reconsidering the construct
underlying ICAO language assessment, with implications for both test
design and aviation English training. Kim advocates for an expanded
communicative construct that takes seriously the interactional,
domain-specific, and community-embedded dimensions of pilot-ATC
exchanges.
EVALUATION
Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca is a timely, well-argued,
and admirably coherent contribution to the field of English for
Specific Purposes (ESP) and language for professional purposes (LPP)
more broadly. Kim has achieved her stated goals with considerable
success. The monograph synthesizes a complex body of scholarship,
spanning ELF theory, language testing policy, aviation safety
research, and discourse analysis, into an accessible and
well-structured argument that will be useful to applied linguists,
language testers, and aviation English specialists alike.
Theoretical coherence and originality: The decision to frame aviation
English through communities of practice is one of the book's most
distinctive and productive moves. While CoP has been widely applied in
sociolinguistics and language education (cf. Eckert and Wenger 2005),
its application to aviation radiotelephony is relatively novel. It
allows Kim to move beyond the competence-deficit framing that has
dominated both ICAO policy and much prior ESP research on aviation
English, and to foreground instead the ways in which communicative
repertoire is collectively built through participation in overlapping
professional communities. This is a genuinely useful theoretical
reorientation. Readers familiar with earlier critiques of
native-speakerism in ELF research, including Jenkins (2000) on
phonology and Seidlhofer (2004) on lexicogrammar, will recognize the
intellectual tradition Kim is extending, but the application to an
institutionally regulated, safety-critical domain gives the argument a
distinctive urgency and novelty.
The critique of ICAO policy: Kim's critical evaluation of the ICAO
Language Proficiency Requirements is one of the most valuable sections
of the Element. The argument is carefully built: the LPRs emerged from
a specific accident-analysis context, were shaped by assumptions about
native-speaker norms, and produced a regulatory architecture that
continues to exempt native English speakers from proficiency testing,
an exemption that, from an ELF perspective, is difficult to justify
theoretically. Kim handles this critique with appropriate scholarly
restraint; she acknowledges the safety motivations behind the LPRs
while clearly demonstrating their conceptual limitations. The accident
case studies are handled efficiently and effectively, serving their
illustrative function without sensationalism. This section will be of
value to language testing scholars who have engaged with parallel
debates in other high-stakes professional domains (cf. Douglas 2000 on
Language for Specific Purposes testing).
Empirical contribution: The analysis of live radiotelephony discourse
in abnormal situations constitutes the Element's most distinctive
empirical contribution. Aviation communication data of this kind is
notoriously difficult to obtain, and Kim's ability to bring genuine
corpus data to bear -- rather than relying on simulated or
training-scenario speech, as many studies in this area are constrained
to do, significantly strengthens the analysis. The incorporation of
domain specialist perspectives adds a methodological layer that
extends and productively complicates the researcher's own
discourse-analytic readings. The finding that domain knowledge
limitations, interacting with language difficulties, can produce
communicatively unsafe outcomes is both important and undertheorized
in the existing literature; Kim's work makes a meaningful contribution
to filling this gap.
Audience and fit within the series: As an entry in the Cambridge
Elements in Applied Linguistics series, the monograph is appropriately
pitched: it presupposes familiarity with ELF research and language
testing debates, and is clearly aimed at researchers and graduate
students in applied linguistics rather than at aviation practitioners
per se. Within this audience, it will have wide appeal. Scholars
working on English for Specific Purposes will find the policy critique
valuable; those working on language assessment will find the construct
argument directly relevant; and those interested in workplace
discourse and professional communication will appreciate the CoP
framing and the radiotelephony data. One might wish that a slightly
longer section had been devoted to concrete implications for test
designers and training developers; the recommendations in the
conclusion, while sensible, are necessarily brief given the format.
Potential limitations and open questions: A few areas invite further
interrogation. First, the communities of practice framework, while
theoretically productive, raises the question of how one
operationalizes community membership and legitimate peripheral
participation in a domain where individual professional trajectories
vary enormously, a Korean first officer on an international route and
a senior Korean ATC at Incheon International Airport inhabit very
different CoP configurations. Kim gestures toward this heterogeneity
but the framework might be pushed further to account for it. Second,
the Element's empirical data, while valuable, is drawn primarily from
Korean aviation contexts, a focus consistent with Kim's broader
research program. While this provides analytical depth and continuity,
it raises questions about generalizability: do the same dynamics of
community-embedded repertoire development obtain in, say, multilingual
West African airspace or in the Gulf region, where the English
varieties and aviation community histories differ substantially? These
are research gaps the work opens rather than closes, and Kim is
appropriately measured in her claims to generalizability.
Third, and most substantively from the perspective of language
testing, the call for an expanded communicative construct, one that
incorporates domain knowledge alongside language proficiency, is
well-motivated theoretically but raises difficult practical questions
about construct coverage, rater training, and test feasibility that
the format of the Element does not allow Kim to fully address. These
are pressing questions that the field will need to take up, and the
work provides a clear intellectual foundation for doing so.
Broader significance: Beyond its specific contributions to aviation
English research, the Element has broader implications for the study
of English in high-stakes, institutionally regulated professional
domains. It adds to a growing body of work, including Friginal et al.
(2024) and others that challenges the adequacy of general English
proficiency testing as a proxy for professional communicative
competence. Kim's integration of ELF theory, communities of practice,
critical policy analysis, and empirical discourse data offer a
methodological model that researchers working in other professional
domains (legal English, medical communication, maritime English) would
do well to engage with.
In sum, Kim has produced a focused, intellectually rigorous, and
practically significant scholarly contribution. The Element succeeds
admirably in demonstrating that aviation English is better understood
as a socially embedded lingua franca phenomenon than as a technical
code to be measured against a native-speaker proficiency standard. It
will be essential reading for anyone working in aviation English,
language for professional purposes, or ELF-informed language testing
policy.
REFERENCES
Douglas, Dan. 2000. Assessing Languages for Specific Purposes.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, Penelope, and Etienne Wenger. 2005. Communities of practice in
sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9(4). 582-589.
Friginal, Eric, Malila Prado, and Jennifer Roberts (eds.). 2024.
Global Aviation English Research. London: Bloomsbury.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International
Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kim, Hyejeong. 2013. Exploring the construct of radiotelephony
communication: A critique of the ICAO English testing policy from the
perspective of Korean aviation experts. Papers in Language Testing and
Assessment 2(2). 103-110.
Kim, Hyejeong. 2018. What constitutes professional communication in
aviation: Is language proficiency enough for testing purposes?
Language Testing 35(3). 403-426.
Kim, Hyejeong. 2026. Aviation English as a Global Lingua Franca.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Elements in Applied
Linguistics).
Kim, Hyejeong, and Rosey Billington. 2018. Pronunciation and
comprehension in English as a lingua franca communication: Effect of
L1 influence in international aviation communication. Applied
Linguistics 39(2). 135-158.
Kim, Hyejeong, and Catherine Elder. 2009. Understanding aviation
English as a lingua franca: Perceptions of Korean aviation personnel.
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 32(3). 23.1-23.17.
Kim, Hyejeong, and Catherine Elder. 2015. Interrogating the construct
of aviation English: Feedback from test takers in Korea. Language
Testing 32(2). 129-149.
Kim, Hyejeong, and Eric Friginal. 2025. Washback in language for
professional purposes testing: A case of pilot-air traffic controller
radiotelephony communication. In David Allen (ed.), Washback Research
in Language Assessment: Fundamentals and Contexts, 172-184. New York:
Routledge.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2004. Research perspectives on teaching English
as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24. 209-239.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and
Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Yakubu Bitrus Gali is a Ph.D. student in the Department of
Anthropology (Linguistics) at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
His research specializes in the morphosyntax and documentation of
Bura, a West Chadic language spoken in northeastern Nigeria. His
broader academic interests encompass field linguistics, language
endangerment, Chadic linguistics, and the intersection of language
policy and professional communication. Yakubu also holds a Ph.D. in
General Linguistics and an M.A. in Linguistics from Bayero University,
Kano, Nigeria, as well as a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of
Maiduguri, Nigeria. A 2022–2023 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching
Assistant (FLTA) alumnus at Michigan State University, he has
published peer-reviewed research on Bura morphosyntax, tense,
labialization, and pronominals.



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