Analysis Of International Business Contract: A Functional Stylistic Approach

With the globalization of economy and the deepening of China's opening-up to the outside world, especially with its accession to the WTO, the two-way trades, investments and other business activities between China and other countries have become and are becoming more and more frequent. In accordance with the game rules of the economic"jungle", any of such activities have to be defined and bound by a sub-type of legal documents--contract, which, in such cases, called international business contract. Yet with further development of the business communications, disputes arising from the contracts also mount up. In order to avoid any possible disputes, it is most basic for the practitioners of international business to comprehend, formulate and translate such contracts professionally. Mastering the stylistic features of the contracts will, in an effective way, help them achieve this competence. The present study, within the framework of functional stylistics, aims to find out the stylistic features of the IBC on the levels of semantics and lexico-grammar.This thesis falls into seven chapters. Chapter 1 serves as a brief introduction to the reasons why the author takes IBC as the research topic and why he takes the functional stylistics as the theoretical basis. It then introduces the objectives of the research. Chapter 2 is literature review. It reviews the various perspectives of style, stylistics and its development, and then gives a detailed introduction to functional stylistics. Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework of this research. First, it presents the theoretical basis of functional stylistics—systemic functional linguistics, introducing metafunction theory, multi-strata theory, context theory, register and genre theory. Then it presents the functional stylistic approach proposed by Halliday and further developed by Zhang Delu in his monograph Linguistic Functions and Language Style (2005), which is also the approach followed by this thesis. Chapter 4 introduces international business contract's definition, function and classification in detail, as well as its structure and language features in brief. Then also in this chapter, the way to collect data and the criteria to select samples are also introduced. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 are the parts for practical research. Chapter 5 analyzes the semantic structure of IBC from two levels, genre and texture. Following the generic structure potential theory, the generic structure of IBC is concluded, and following the cohesive devices it employs, the texture of IBC is found out. Findings are as follows: An international business contract always consists of the following obligatory elements: 1) Contract title; 2) Description of contracting parties; 3) Contractual subject matter; 4) Contract price; 5)Liability of the breach of the contract; 6) Amendment of the contract; 7) Termination of the contract; 8) Applicable or governing law; 9) Notice; 10) Force Majeure; 11) Dispute Resolution;12) Signature by contracting parties; 13) Date of signing. It is also found that an international business contract mainly employs cohesive devices of lexical repetition and demonstrative reference. Other devices are rarely applied. Chapter 6 focuses on the lexico-grammatical features of IBC. It consists of two sections, the ideational function and the interpersonal function, each, respectively, restricted to the field and tenor of the legal register. In the first section, the transitivity system of IBC is studied in three aspects: process, participant and circumstance. Then also from the three aspects, the vocabulary of IBC is presented. The findings are as follows: (1) The ideational meaning of an international business contract is mainly realized by material process, relational process and verbal process. Other processes are rare. (2) Participants are mainly contracting parties, contractual subject matter and other factors relating to the matter. (3)The most frequent circumstantial elements occurring in an international business contract are location and extent expressing time and place. Besides, manner, angle, and cause are also often used. Contingency and accompaniment are sometimes found. (4) The vocabulary of an international business contract restricted to the field includes technical terms, some common words with uncommon meanings, and some coordinate word groups. The second section of Chapter 6 is for interpersonal function. First the IBC's mood and modality are analyzed. Then the vocabulary to realize the interpersonal function is studied. There are such findings in this section: (1) The language of an international business mainly functions as commands, in the form of statements to maintain the interpersonal features of formality, objectivity and authoritativeness.(2) Modality of an international business contract as a command is mainly of obligation, expressed by finite modal operators including shall, may, will, be entitled to, etc. (3) The vocabulary of an IBC in connection with interpersonal function includes the modal operators, especially the most frequently used shall, formal words and archaisms. Chapter 7 is the conclusion of this thesis, giving a brief summary of the research, concluding the findings, presenting the limitations and raising suggestions for future research.