Research On Lexical Chunks In Business English Contracts

In the mid of1970s, Becker and Bolinger first put forward the term "Lexical chunk", aspecial multi-word phenomenon that exists between lexis and grammar. It is beneficial forlanguage learners for its fixedness and predictability.In the past four decades, great achievements have been made by linguists andnon-linguists both at abroad and home in the relative researches on lexical chunks in manydifferent fields. The major findings can be concluded as following: language is not lexicalizedgrammar but grammaticalized lexis; language is mainly consist of lexical chunks; lexicalchunks are of productivity; people can acquire language by learning lexical chunks and thefluency and proficiency of the language depend a lot on the number of lexical chunks stored inpeople's memory. Therefore, it is widely believed that lexical chunks are crucial in the processof language acquisition and the lexical-chunk approach can be applied to teach language.Besides, with the high development of global economic and the increased expansion inthe exchanges and cooperation of trade, as one of the most important ways of communication,business English contracts play more and more indispensable role in the recent business world.The quality of the contracts may directly determine the success or failure of the actual businessdeals.Since lexical chunks bear crucial importance in language acquisition and business Englishcontracts' practical value, it is of great importance to research the characteristics of lexicalchunks in business English contracts by learners who study English as a foreign language.However, previous studies are mainly stress on the theoretical exploration. There are manyempirical studies have been conducted, but most of which concentrate on the use of lexicalchunks in spoken or written English for general purposes. However, studies on lexical chunksin English for special purposes, especially in business English contracts, are still a relativelynew dimension.In order to make sure that the researching data are both appropriate and representative,50pieces of business English contracts in five widely used types are collected：sales contracts,purchase contracts, agency contracts, employment contracts and lease contracts. Ten of eachtype is collected. Lewis' definition and classifications of lexical chunk are adopted in this paper. Withqualitative and quantitative approaches, this study conducts a research on the use of lexicalchunks in business English contracts and mainly explores the following three questions:1)What characteristics of lexical chunks in business English contracts?2) What functions oflexical chunks in business English contracts?3) What relationships between lexical chunks andbusiness English contracts?Based on the collected data and analysis, a high frequency of lexical chunks in businessEnglish contracts is found: there is one lexical chunk in every4.3words. According to theanalysis and research, the characteristics of lexical chunks in business English contracts can beconcluded as following: Firstly, the number and frequency of lexical chunks in form of wordsand poly-words is the biggest, followed by sentence frames and heads, institutionalizedutterance and collocation. Secondly, there exists diversity in the use of lexical chunks indifferent types of business English contracts. The frequency sequence of the use of lexicalchunks in the five types of business English contracts is employment contracts, sales contracts,purchase contracts, lease contracts and agency contracts. Moreover, Lexical chunks play acrucial role in helping learners to construct and organize the writing of business Englishcontracts. The lexical-chunk learning approach in business English contracts can help learnersby facilitating their memorization of vocabulary, avoiding inappropriate use of language indifferent registers and enhancing the fluency of their writing.According to the findings, several suggestions are given: Firstly, teachers should teachbusiness English lexis on the basis of lexical chunks and focus on educating the awareness oflexical chunks of students. Secondly, teachers should cultivate the students' habit to draw upthe contracts by using lexical chunks and teach them the register to ensure the appropriatenessof the language used in their business English contracts writing. Moreover, it is also importantfor teachers to provide more relevant exercises for students to master lexical chunks and toenhance the level of their business English contracts writing.This study is only a tentative research on the use of lexical chunks in business Englishcontracts. It is inevitable that limitations may exist in the process of analysis and more effortsare needed to conduct further and deeper researches in future.