Explicit And Implicit Cohesions In English Economic Contract Texts: A Perspective Of Textual Function

With the trend of global economic integration and our country’s further opening to the world,the policy of "the Belt and Road Initiative" and "China Free Trade Zone" has been proposed in China.The economic ties among countries in the world become much closer.Familiarity with the content of the economic contract is important for practitioners in this field to build a more effective and mutually beneficial relationship.So,it is significant to make a relatively systematic and objective study of textual function of the English economic contract texts.Based on Halliday & Hasan’s core theory of cohesion in Cohesion in English,combined with functional stylistics,this thesis analyzes English economic contract texts through quantitative and qualitative methods,proceeding from the perspective of textual function,studying cohesive devices and their functions in English economic contract texts.Explicit cohesion includes grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion,and implicit cohesion consists of three types of thematic progressions.The study shows that,(1)for general stylistic features,legal language has a unique style;at the lexical level,some archaic words,technical terms and modal verbs(shall,may and must)are widely used.At the syntactic level,some conditional sentences and declarative sentences are preferred.At the textual level,legal discourse has formal and rigorous characteristics because of the features of legal language itself.(2)For explicit cohesion references are used frequently to show the unity of legal language.Some conjunctions and collocations make the whole texts more coherent and full of objectivity and fairness instead of ambiguity.For implicit cohesion,parallel patterns and simple linear patterns are used frequently.However,derived pattern is seldom used,which emphasizes the rigorous structure of legal texts.Explicit cohesion and implicit cohesion show well the textual functions of English economic contract texts.These typical style markers of legal English texts fully reveal the style of legal English variety.Getting familiar with these markers is undoubtedly helpful to understand or translate legal English texts.This thesis tries to help readers to have a further comprehension of linguistic features and cohesive ties of those legal contracts.And as for those people who are teaching or learning legal knowledge,this thesis also provides relevant information for them.Moreover,it can also help create a relatively well-translated version of English economic contract texts.