A Stylistic Analysis Of English Business Contract

English business contract is an agreement enforced by law. It concerns the economic activities of different countries, different enterprises and different organizations. As a sub-variety of Legal English, it plays an increasingly important role in our social life. With the development of science and economy, business contract has stepped into our modem life. With China's entering WTO, the development in business transactions will be rapid and, at the same time, we are facing many challenges. As a legal document and weapon, business contract will function greatly in standardizing the movement, enhancing the development, being on guard for payment risk and consolidating the achievements of international trade. People concerned have been paying attention to the development of the language of business contract. However, most of the research on business contract has merely touched upon some aspects of this sub-variety or has just made a general investigation at a superficial level. A profound study of business contract from a stylistic perspective is far from satisfactory.This thesis focuses on analysis of business contract by using the theories of modern stylistics. The procedure of stylistic analysis in this thesis includes three dimensions-linguistic description, textual analysis and .contextual factor analysis. As for the linguistic description, which is the major concern, this thesis tries to explore the language features from three levels-graphology, lexis and syntax. At graphological level, we find that the shape of type is nearly the same; comma and stop take the predominance; capitalization is the prevalence. At lexical level, Archaic words, formal words, coordination and defining words, etc. are striking features of business contract.At syntactical level, we find that many subordinate clauses frequently appear?with many levels of adverbials which are often placed in the middle ofsentences. This displays the tightness and clarity of the language of contract.Major sentences take the dominant position in business contract instead of elliptical sentences, exclamatory sentences and minor sentences; adverbial conditional clause of forms the basic sentence structure in stipulating and modifying the smooth practice of law in business contract. Then we touch upon some aspects of textual analysis and contextual factors analysis. In textual analysis, we concentrate on intrinsic properties of sentences from the point of cohesive devices-grammatical devices, lexical cohesion and subordinating connectors.Because any text can not be fully understood when it is isolated from the context in which it is used, this thesis goes on to deal with the contextual factors. We place emphasis on medium of communication, role-relationship, subject matter and purpose of business contract. Finally, we make a summary of what we have found in this study. This thesis tries to reveal linguistic features of business contract and provide sufficient basis for the effective drafting and deeper understanding of business contract, which, we hope, will help the draftsmen and executors of business contract to better understand and use the language of business contract.