The Stylistic Analysis Of The Syntactic Features Of Legal English

Legal language is the language specifically used in the profession of law. It is the dress of the legal thought and the embodiment of the legal spirit. The writing and recording of law is mainly realized by the written language. Legal English is a special register of English. It has the distinctive features which distinguish from the literary language, and other practical styles.Being a functional variant of English, the stylistic features of legal English are determined by the functions of law. Because of its special functions in the social activity, legal English is bound to be formal, accurate, conservative, being devoid of vagueness and ambiguity. But the excessive pursuit of formality and accuracy make this style of writing rather complex, wordy, and even dull. Since all these features make their ways into the syntax, by studying the syntactic features of legal English, one can have a deep understanding of the characters of this specific English style.Functional stylistics is one of the leading theories in modern stylistics, and Halliday's innovative perspectives, such as activated foregrounding, context and the three elements of context of situation are all influential and instructive. The present research on the syntactic features of legal English in this thesis is under the guidance of the theories of functional stylistics. The macro-analysis concerns the realizations of the three meta-functions in the legal context, and the three elements of context of situation, namely field, tenor, and mode in the context of law. The micro-analysis focuses on the language level of syntax by exploring the syntactic features of legal English. The conclusion of the research is that as a functional variant of English, the functions of legal English determine its syntactic features; in return, its distinctive features contribute to the implementation of the functions this specific register plays.