On The Lexical Relations In Chinese And English Contract Language

Currently, contract law, which is initially concerned with general rights and obligations of people, has got more and more attention from the general public. The parties ascertain the terms and conditions through the formation of contract, and in consequence to realize their interests through the performance of a contract, then, the adjustment of property relationship has been realized. Hence, the pursuit of precision in contract language is really important, and the lexical relations in contracts are closely interrelated with the interests of people. From the perspective of linguistics, there are a large number of scholars from different linguistic schools have illustrated lexical relations. One of the most extraordinary schools which study this field very well is structural semantics. It has set forth the hyponymy, antonymy as well as converses very clearly. However, thanks to the development of semantic and lexicology, the study of lexical relations becomes more and more specific and several new research methods are employed in this field.Therefore, based on the analysis of lexical relations, this thesis reviews the lexical relations from the perspectives of linguistics as well as contract law. The author analyzes the ambiguity and vagueness in both Chinese and English contract contexts, and then surveys the lexical gap and non-correspondence in meaning aroused by the differences of legal lexicons in these two languages. Finally, the author tries to suggest some translation strategies to solve these problems, doing something beneficial to the understanding of contract law and the contract communication between China and English-speaking countries. Since contract language concerns a great deal of branches of law and it comes into being through various types, this thesis just focuses on the Chinese and English written contracts.This dissertation first briefly introduces the characteristics of contract language as well as the significance of lexicon in legal language, and then the theoretical foundations are given here. In this part, the essay is not limit to structural semantics, but also provides more viewpoints from other scholars and schools into the study of lexical relations. After the theoretical basis, the author makes a static study of the lexical relations of Chinese and English contract language. Similarities and dissimilarities of contract lexicons are illustrated here. Since contract is closely interacted with social life, the last two chapters of this thesis are focusing on the issues in the dynamic world. Although contract takes precision as its eternal theme, ambiguity still exists in contract due to the polysemous words and other phenomena like the change of meaning. Moreover, sometimes, the terms and conditions of a contract should be flexible, then the fuzziness or vagueness of contract language originated. Furthermore, the differences such as historical and cultural backgrounds, social customs and religious beliefs, the dissimilar legal systems and different levels of economic development may lead to lexical gaps or non-correspondence in meaning. Thus, the author suggests some translation skills to solve problems like these. Finally, the author hopes the study of lexical relations in the field of contracts can get the attention of the academic world, so that communication between China and the English-speaking countries can be promoted.