Functional Discourse Analysis Of International Business Contract

Systemic functional grammar takes the actual use of language as the object ofresearch, and can help us understand, explain, evaluate the use and effect of languagein communicative process. According to Halliday (1994), systemic functionalgrammar can explain the language nature, function and development; explore thevarious actual activities of language, for instance, the compilation of dictionary orgrammar book, judicial problems and communication among authorities; comprehendthe nature of discourse value and study the literary and non-literary works throughresearching on different discourse. But using the systemic functional grammar toresearch the discourse of international business contract is very rare in the presentChinese linguistic and law. And the research on international business contract mostlylies on the macro linguistic level. Some researches are mainly on stylistic features orthe characteristics of words and the syntactic usage. Based on this, the thesis tries toanalyze the discourse of international business contract from the perspective ofsystemic functional grammar，so as to prove the validity of systemic functionalgrammar in discourse analysis.This thesis takes the three meta-functions and register theory as the theoreticalframe. Through the analysis of the situational context and linguistic characteristics of international business contract, and how the language realize these threemeta-functions in this special register, then using a method of “context-discourse-evaluation” to analyze the discourse of international business contract, the author ofthe thesis concludes that the systemic functional grammar can reveal the deepmeaning of discourse, understand and explain the semantic and style of discourse.Moreover, due to the practical applicability of systemic functional grammar, thediscourse analysis of international business contract can help us understand thecontent of contract correctly and guide the activities on contract translation andbusiness negotiation. For this reason, it can improve the successful rate of businesscommunication and reduce the economic losses produced by misunderstanding orambiguity of contract.