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Crash Of Avianca Airlines Flight 052 Summary

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Week 6 Discussion The importance of proper communication is emphasized in our lesson this week by showing the negative effects of what can occur when the meaning of language is altered. Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Crash of Avianca Airlines Flight 052” explains the actual event where the inaccurate interpretation of dialogue between the pilots and air traffic workers lead to the fatal crash of an airplane. Gladwell refers to this miscommunication as “mitigated speech”, and defines the concept in his article as, “any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said” (276). To clarify, when people pacify the true significance of their words, they change what they initially wanted their words to mean. This prompts Gladwell’s belief that the lack of appropriate meaning in the pilot’s words caused the severity of the issue to not be fully comprehended by the air traffic workers, which ultimately, lead to the devastating accident. In other words, if the two pilots used words that clearly told the air traffic workers that their lack of fuel was an urgent, dangerous matter, Gladwell feels the crash could have been prevented. …show more content…

When talking to people like teachers, parents, or strangers in public, I typically speak to them in a way that I am suppose to rather than my normal way of talking.While discussing a topic they might not want to hear or asking them to do something, mitigated speech allows me to be compliant towards those authority figures. For example, I would say I use a more mitigated language with my parents the most. Between asking for permission to do an activity or telling them about a bad test grade, I completely downplay the situation to them. I agree with Gladwell that in this case using mitigated language is harmless, but I do feel there are certain times where it should not be used, like in a real

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