Analysis On Legal English Text And Speech Acts By Functional Grammar

It is relatively common to analyze the features of legal text in perspective of morphology, syntax and grammar in most papers of recent years. This paper, however, tentatively explores legal English from a new angle - functional grammar, aiming at the cognition of this new theoretical system, introducing the theory into the orientation of text analysis, and investigating its practical dedication to the achievement of speech acts in legal text.The novelty of this thesis lies in the unique perspective of theoretical system of metafunctions from which the features of language structure and wording and phrasing in legal text are viewed. Further, based on the metafunctions and legal register, the author studies the devices for the achievement of legal speech acts, in an attempt to expound on the relationship between functional grammar and speech acts, their respective functions, their interaction with each other and how they concurrently accomplish the subject in legal text.This paper is composed of four chapters.The first chapter makes the introduction to the theory of functional grammar, particularly the three metafunctions and their sub-systems.In the second chapter, legal English is researched in depth on the basis of those sub-systems in order to discover the features of legalEnglish. The author gives an extensive survey on the sub-system of transitivity and finds that in legal English, material process is more typical than all the other five processes for the requirements of directness and objectiveness of legal English.Chapter Three focuses on the introduction to register theory, which has close relationship with metafunctions. Register is concerned with the variables of field, tenor, and mode. In this chapter, the author makes an analysis on some examples of actual legal texts and finally concludes that the legal register is realized by experiential meanings, interpersonal meanings and textual meanings respectively.Chapter Four presents the theory of speech acts, remolds and classifies the legal speech acts from the angle of functional grammar. And also within the frame of this theory, the author tries to find out what functions semantic systems and register perform to realize the speech acts in legal text. During the study of transitivity system in legal English, we can notice the phenomenon of the frequent use of "action-verbs" featured in material process in the legal documents. They fulfill the explicit performatives of legal speech acts. As to legal register, it is the "meaning potential" revealed by field, tenor and mode that demonstrates the characteristics of authoritativeness, restrictiveness, accuracy and standardization of the speech acts in legal text.The motivation of this thesis is to arouse more interest in functionalgrammar in application to legal text study. The author sincerely hopes that this thesis could serve as a breakthrough to the traditional pattern and method of study on legal text and provide a new way of thought in future survey of legal text.