People in aviation – a linguists’ insight into history

Abstract

History can be studied from a number of angles and on the basis of a variety of sources. Researchers interested in the history of aviation typically focus on the development of subsequent types of flying machines. This study relates to the history of aviation, but, due to its linguistic bias it concentrates on the semantic field <people in aviation>. The structure of this field is analysed on the basis of a collection of nouns that form the relating lexical fields. In detail the study is aimed to cast some light on the history of modern aviation, i.e. aviation that started with the 1903 flight made by the Wright Brothers in an engine-driven machine, and has been continued up to now. Importantly, in 1911, soon after the first flight took place, the first dictionary of aviation was published. This specialized dictionary served as an inspiration for an attempt to draw a linguistic picture of the discipline at the beginning of the 20th century, and later to contrast it with a linguistic picture of the discipline as emerging from modern specialized dictionaries of aviation one century later. Additionally, the analysis of particular nouns, including the study of their morphological structure and semantics leads to some interesting observations relating to the history of modern aviation.