Safety and its Signification: A case for a language of safety

The safety aspect of a domain of knowledge, the outcome of interactions between the linguistic, ethical and legal aspects of that domain, is the product of a cross-disciplinary enterprise; safety-critical systems, like energy generation and distribution systems, air-traffic control systems, are the artefacts of safety-aware communities. Such communities, made up of scientists, engineers, end-users, service providers and so on, exist at a national level in most countries of the world. A study of the language used by those involved with the safety of people and machines in a variety of specialisms shows a degree of commonality across these specialisms, at the lexical or vocabulary level. Furthermore, there are some indications that lexical and grammatical collocations behave in a manner idiosyncratic to this language. There are arguments for postulating a language of safety for two purposes: first, to study the knowledge related to the safety-related artefacts of a given specialism; second, to understand how this knowledge of safety can be disseminated with minimal ambiguity through an appreciation of the constructs in the postulated language.