论合同英语的语言特征本科毕业论文

1、. . . . 本科毕业论文 中文题目： 论合同英语的语言特征 外文题目: A Comment onLinguostylistics ofContract English36 / 43论合同英语的语言特征摘要：本文旨在阐述英文合同语言特性,首先本文旨在分类将英文合同分为三类:传统的合同、正式的合同以与现代的合同。三类合同在语言特征上存在鲜明差异,也反映了英文合同的发展趋势。 传统合同英语可能是最正式的英语合同和拥有许多语言特性例如极限长度的句子有时甚至几个段落是由一个句子组成,缺乏或没有标点符号的,使用了成对的同义词,词汇冗余、重复和省略被大量运用。所以其语言特征风格的传统是正式的、精确的和保

2、守的。正式合同与传统合在语言特征方面拥有很多共性,同时也有不少差异,其拥有大量与短句子搭配的长句子,极限长度的句子被大量运用,但却排斥了成对的近义词。正式合同英语具有正式、准确、明确的特征。现代合同在语言特征上与传统合同与正式合同有着明显的区别,其主要采用短句子,有时甚至用短语来充当句子,许多描述性以与规性的形容词和副词都被英语的现代合同中,大量非谓语性动词被当做后置修饰,现代合同的语言特征是精确、明了和简洁。本文还探讨了对于传统合同和正式合同的解释方法,并且预测了英文合同的未来发展趋势。关键词：语言特征；传统合同；现代合同 ；正式合同A Comment onLinguostylistics

3、ofContract EnglishAbstractThis paper is aimed at expounding the linguostylistic features of the contract EnglishFirst it is designed toclassify the Englishcontractsintothree kinds：the traditional,the formal and the modernThe traditional contract English may be the most formal of all English varietie

4、s and possess many lingual features such as extreme length ofa sentencesometimes,even several paragraphs are constituted by onesentencedearth or absence of punctuation pervasion of archaic and bigwords，employment of special terms,and paired synonyms,redundanceof expressions,repetition of words,omiss

5、ion of articles and so onThelingual styles of the traditional are formal,precise and conservativeThe formal contract English resembles the traditional contract English in many ways,but differs a lotIt owns a great proportion of longsentences but mixed them with some short onesIt holds many archaican

6、d big words but rejects paired synonymIt develops the section specially for definition and double way toindicate numbersThe lingualstyles of the formal contract English is formal,precise and clearThe Modern Contract English is quite different from the traditionaland formal contract English .It accom

7、modates mostly short sentences,and even phrases that act as sentences,some descriptive and subjectiveadjectives and adverbs may find their way intothe modern contractItshows a fondness for infinite verbs as postmodifiers.The lingual stylesof the modern contract English are precise,clear and conciseT

8、his paper also provides an approach tocomprehension of the traditional and formal contracts and predicts the tendency of the contract Eng1ish stylesKey words：Linguostylistics ；Traditional Contract ；Formal Contract； Modern ContractAcknowledgementsFirst and foremost,I would like to express my heartfel

9、t gratitude to my supervisor,both for his intellectual guidance and for his warm and constant encouragement during the process of writing this thesis. With patience and prudence,he labored through drafts of this thesis and pointed out defects in my theorizing. Therefore,I owe all the merits in this

10、thesis,if any,to him,though I am fully aware that the thesis might still contain some mistakes,for which I bear the whole responsibility.My cordial and sincere thanks go to all the teachers in the Department of English,whose interesting and informative courses have benefited me a lot during my colle

11、ge years. The profit that I gained from their profound knowledge,remarkable expertise and intellectual ingenuity will be of everlasting significance to my future life and career.I am also very grateful to my classmates,who have given me a lot of helpand courage during my stay in the University and t

12、hroughout the process of writing this thesis. Last but not the least,big thanks go to my family who have shared with me my worries,frustrations,and hopefully my ultimate happiness in eventually finishing this thesis.Contents中文摘要iAbstractiiAcknowledgementsiii.Introduction1II.Classification of English

13、 Contracts4III.Traditional Contract5A.Features ofLingual Styles of Traditional Contract61.Unusual Length of Sentence62 Dearth ofPunctuation63Archaism74Special Terms7B Summary of Lingual Styles of Traditional Contract8IV.Formal Contract9A. Features of Lingual Styles of Formal Contract91.Mixture of Lo

14、ng and Short Sentences92.Full Punctuation103. Less Archaism104. Pervasive Special Terms and Formal Words105.Fewer Words in Pair116. Complicated and Strict Expression11B.some Syntactic Features11C.Other Features12V.Modern Contract13A.Features of Lingual Styles of Modem Contract131.Short Sentences132.

15、Full Punctuation133.Fewer Archaic Special and Big Words134.No Paired Words and Complicated and Strict Expressions145.Use of Descriptive Adjectives and Adverbs146. No Omission of Article147.Ungrammatical Capitalization15B.Summary of Lingual Styles of Modem Contracts15VIApplication16A.The Approach tos

16、olving the Problems 16B.Prophecy toDevelopment ofLingual Styles of English Contracts17VIIConclusion18Notes19Bibliography20.IntroductionA contract is one of the basic social and legal institutions in modern society. A contract frames and coordinates human interactions. It is an agreement that creates

17、,assigns,delegates,and transfers rights and obligations,tangible and intangible goods,services,and entitlements between the contracting parties,relying on their voluntary,rational,and deliberate consent. Today,contractual relationships among persons,communities,organizations,and states emerge as an

18、alternative or at least as an amendatory legal instrument of market coordination and state regulation. A contract binds person to person,person to organization,organization to organization,person to society,person to state,and state to state in private,social,economic,and political affairs. Since co

19、ntracts embrace almost all aspects of human affairs from business to marriage,it is difficult to develop a general theory of contract that could provide a normative framework for all human interactions based on various macro- and micro-level,formal and informal,and written and unwritten agreements.

20、Since the theoretical diversities of the notion of contract are rooted in different legal and philosophical traditions,they offer different accounts of its philosophical origin,moral motivations,and practical justification for its prevalence in modern society. Conflicting assessments cause theoretic

21、al,doctrinal,and practical tensions and incoherencies in contract law,adjudication,and contractual settlement. Therefore,despite the long and rich intellectual history of philosophical,moral,legal,economic,and political reflections on contract,many contemporary scholars hold that contracts still lac

22、k any clear and consistent theoretical foundation. The critical remarks about differing assumptions and interpretations apply equally in civil law countries,where contracts are often justified on moral grounds and given a certain kind of redemptive power in the implementation of a just and well-orde

23、red society,and in commonlaw countries,where the economic analysis of contracts seems to be too narrow in its philosophical and moral foundation. This entry presents an overview of the basic theoretical concepts of contract from contractarian rightsbased to consequentialist perspectives (explained h

24、ereafter). Instead of making a futile attempt to outline a general theory of contract,this entry will focus instead on how competing approaches and theories endeavor to conceive and explain the basic philosophical ideas underlying contract.As the era with the termination of the"Cold War"an

25、d the tendency of cooperation beckons the integration of global economiesthe world hasseen an unprecedented boom in international tradesIn the course ofbusiness transaction,the documents of the greatest importance are contracts,of which a dominant proportion is written in English,(or at leastEnglish

26、 is used as one language of a bilingual contract)Because a contract is a legal document and"in some way connected with the imposition of obligations and the conferring of rights"attention will be only paid to,and settlement will be only based on,what the contractdeclaresin case a dispute a

27、rises over a transaction and is brought toa court of 1awer arbitrationTherefore a thorough knowledge of an English contract isindispensable toreading it1However,the acquisition of the thorough knowledge is a hard nut,because the English used in some contracts is"a language of great complexity a

28、nd toa layman often obscurity"It may be not too far from thetruth tosay that toan enormous number of people from nonEnglishspeaking country,who have been learning English for many years,someEnglish contracts are all GreekEven a native speaker of English admitted"what little bit I can under

29、stand"Why are people in the street perplexed by some English contracts?Ionce made questionnaire-investigation which included two samplesOneofthem was a contract and the other was a letter,but both related tothesame affair concerning the hiring of a fiatThe outcomes of the investigation showed t

30、hat more than 90 percent of the investigates,a11 of whom have learned English at least for more than 8 yearswere unable to understand the contract fully,but able tocomprehend the letter quite well and that the reason for causing the difficulty in reading the contract,intheir opinion,was lingual,tobe

31、 more exactly,syntactical and lexicalMany scholars and linguists have probed intothe contract Englishbut they studied it under the general name of legal English and discoursed upon it on the basis of oldfashioned contractsThis dissertationis intended therefore toexpound the contract English specific

32、ally.including the changes of the linguostylisticsThe first step is toclassify thecontracts intothree kinds according tolingual stylesFollowing that,description and discussion of each kind will be focused on the linguostylistic features and their changesFinally,it will provide an approach tofinding

33、a way which is most suitable tous Chinese.soas tofacilitatereading some difficult English contracts in daily practice2II .Classification ofEnglish ContractsWe frequently mention contracts in various contexts: at work,perhaps employment or therapeutic contracts; at home,possibly in relation to buying

34、,leasing or renting a home,insurance,loans and mortgages,telephone,internet or fuel supply; in our general personal and family living,e.g. legal,financial and other professional advice; and leisure activities,such as joining a gym or booking a holiday. Few of us stop to consider in detail what we ac

35、tually mean by the term,what actually makes a contract that is legally enforceable. This chapter takes a look at the legal aspects of making,keeping and sometimes breaching contracts,different types of contractual agreements,and the remedies available for breach of the different types of contract. W

36、e are not trying here to turn readers into lawyers,but simply provide a road map through the thickets of the law to make some common sense of it all and to indicate the potential problem areas. Contract is varied and situation-specific,and if one is in any doubt about a particular contract,legal adv

37、ice should be sought.As what has been mentioned above,based on the lingual stylesthe English contracts can be basically dividedintothree kinds：Traditional,formal and modern contractsThe traditional contracts are those that have almost no Dunctuationand the main verb of the first sentence is the verb

38、 in archaic from "Witnesseth"and the last paragraph begin with the phrase"in witness whereof".The formal ones refer tothe contracts with many details,such asdefinitions,relative terms and conditions and with a number of capitalanywhere in a sentenceThe standard contracts mean tho

39、se containing no definitionsTheterms and conditions are comparatively fewer and direct,and the textleaves blanks for the parties tofill inIII .Traditional ContractThe reason why this kind of contracts is regarded as traditional isthat,just as the word"traditional"implies,these contracts ha

40、ve a longhistoryThe earliest ones were written on parchment and the activitiesthat this kind of contracts covers chiefly are what could be carried outbefore the development of international business,such as the hiring orpurchase of a house or a piece of land,or life insuranceThe two samples chosen h

41、ere may be reasonably central and representative in a linguostylistic senseBecause classical social contract theorists derived the social contract from a prepolitical state of nature and presocial forms of human behavior,opponents of a contractarian view traditionally have questioned using a social

42、contract of specious origins as the philosophical justification for the basic institutions of a fair society. Some contemporary contractarians draw the normative principles of social interactions from a hypothetical social contract that avoids the question of historical origins and presocial forms o

43、f human behavior. Other contemporary contractarians think that binding contracts cannot be traced to a hypothetical social contract and individual rights originating from philosophical ideas; they believe that a social contract originates in a rational agreement by members of society. In other words

44、,the normative principles of interpersonal relationships conceptually emerge from the practical procedures of political dialogues that assign individual rights and obligations to promote individual cooperative interactions and set legal and moral constraints on the pursuit of personal interests. Rig

45、hts-based contract theorists emphasize that the most important principles of the formation of contractual arrangements among individual and institutional contractors are freedom and equity,moral autonomy,fairness,individual well-being,and social utility. They believe that rights should entail these

46、moral and legal constraints on the pursuit of each individual's economic and social interests to motivate and frame all the contractual relationships among members of society. These normative principles are implicitly present in our public morality,legal and political culture providing the legal

47、 justification for contract formation,contract law,and adjudication.A.Features ofLingual Styles of Traditional Contract1.Unusual Length of SentenceAfter a look at the two samples has been taken,what is conjured upfirst may be that the sentences which make up the samples are extremelylongThe first se

48、ntence of Sample One (See Appendix) owns 250 words and the otherhas30 wordsThe only sentence in the sample Two consists of about280 wordsCompared with the average length of an English sentence(17words),the unusual length of a typical sentence in a traditionalEnglish contract is a striking feature of

49、 the lingual style32 Dearth ofPunctuationWhen it comes tounderstanding these lengthy sentences,(lengthynot only in a physical sense,but also in a linguolistic sense)one of theproblems is that there is not much help from punctuationIn Samples one and two,except the parentheses used toprovide some fur

50、ther explanations,some single question marks and one colon,there are no periods,commas,interrogations and so on,which are normally and frequently used in other kinds of writingsOne reason for this phenomenonmay be that punctuation is easily added or deleted by anyone intent uponachieving less commen

51、dable endsThus,the traditional contract Englishmakes it more difficult for common people topick their way through thealready complicated grammar of an insurance policy or a leaseAnother more likely explanation is that punctuation originated as a largelydevice or an aid tophrasing：in other words,punc

52、tuation was intended toshow that a person ought topause or give some indication of abreak when he was reading aloud a piece of written Englishsotoa contract,which is mainly for visual reading,reading aloud may be the lastthing tohappenAlthough absence or dearth of punctuation forfeits theease of rea

53、ding a traditional English contract,compared with removingan opportunity for relatively simpler forgery,which is something a contract should prevent,the difficulty in reading and understanding may 3worthwhile,especially for the party concerned43ArchaismBoth of the samples contain the main verb"

54、witnesseth"whichshows the preservation of an"eth"or ancient inflexional ending for thethird person singular present tense form of the verbIt is interesting thatexcept this verb ending in this way,all the other verbs end in a modernwayThis isolated usage seems toshow that"witnesse

55、th"is used simplyas a matter of tradition,for"witnesses"can be a perfectly acceptable alternativeOther examples of the archaism of a traditional English con-tract embody the compound adverbs that are composed of adverbs suchas"here""there"and"where"with o

56、ne or more prepositions attachedtothemOnly from the Samples One and Two,we can find"hereto","hereon","thereof","hereunder","therefor"and so onThere aresome archaic usages of verbsFor example the verb"suffer"here means"allow"The ar

57、chaism of the contract English helps toenforce the extremely formal quality and can be safely regarded as one of the characteristics of the traditional contract English4.Special TermsAnother outstanding feature of the contract English is that the tradtional English contract uses many a special termT

58、he contract English,for itself,has built up many words that have narrowness or breath ofmeaning and keep only one of a range of meanings of the wordsFor example the word"lessor"(Line 4,Sample one)refers totheperson who are letting the fiat and making the lease"Of the one part"mea

59、ns the legal concept that the interests in the lease are in two parts,one concerning Residential Properties and the other Stephen JacksonInline 9the verb"demise"conveys the meaning of"granting a lease"In line 10"mansion"is used legally for a dwelling·place together withany surrounding buildings which belong toit,but are not actually joinedtoit by some covered way,In normal use,a"mansion is a large and im-posing house"In line 7"reserved"denotes that although the land-lords have granted the use of the fiat by means