| With the deepening of reform and opening up to the outside world, the economy ofChina has increased dramatically. Especially, after China’s entering into WTO, theinternational trade has become more and more active. Foreign economy has been an importantpart of China’s economy. The international business contract, a written agreement for thepeople in different countries to stipulate rights and obligations in transaction, has drawn wideattention. The international sales contract which is the most important type in the internationalbusiness contracts has its unique features. It is of great importance to study the internationalsales contracts.At present, many scholars and business people have studied the international salescontracts from the perspective of the lexical, syntactic and stylistic features. The systemicanalysis of the international sales contract is rare. This thesis attempts to analyze internationalsales contracts from the three metafunctions of systemic-functional grammar, that is,ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction. Thelexico-grammatical features of international sales contracts are found in the analysis. Firstly,the realization of ideational metafunction involves the analysis of transitivity system andvoice system. The analysis of transitivity system demonstrates that the material process,relational and verbal processes are the three main processes. The material process prevails inthese three processes, which is used to stipulate the rights and obligations of the parties. In theanalysis of voice system, it is found that there is a high frequency of passive voice ininternational sales contracts, comparing with everyday English. In these passive sentences, theactors are always omitted, which manifests the objectivity of the contract. Secondly, as awritten and formal language, the declarative mood is dominant in the international salescontracts to show the formality and the definiteness of the contract language. The wide use ofmodal verbs in modality system illustrates the enforceability and prescriptive feature of theclauses in contracts. Thirdly, the textual metafunction analysis is mainly based on the thematicstructure of the international sales contract. The analysis demonstrates that the simple themesuppresses multiple theme and the clausal theme in the clauses of international sales contracts.In the simple themes, the unmarked theme occupies almost the whole portion so as to makethe clause clear and explicit. Through the systemic analysis of the realization of the three metafuctions in theinternational sales contracts, it is obvious that systemic-functional grammar can be employedto make the discourse analysis and it is an effective approach to discourse analysis. It isexpected that this thesis can make some contribution to the study of international salescontract and help business people to understand and draft international sales contract so as topromote the international trade. |
