The Speech Acts In English Legal Texts

The research on legal language has been very popular in recent years, which mainly focuses on lexicology, syntax, translation of legal language, i.e., but rarely on the speech acts in English legal texts. Therefore, based on the speech act theory, the thesis intends to study the speech acts in English legal texts, including legislative texts, judicial texts and other legal texts, which are called legal speech acts, since they are of legal effects. Generally, the speech acts in legal texts, performs the functions of normalizing and regulating people's behavior, which are usually reflected by the combination of such modal verbs as "shall", "may", "can", "should", "ought to", etc. and such performative verbs as "enact", "command", "repeal", "entitle", "amend", "agree", "award", "certify", "swear", "affirm" and so on. In many cases, a legal speech act verb is enough to demonstrate a legal speech act. Based upon the previous studies on speech acts by Austin (1962), Searle (1975), and Trosborg (1995), the thesis classifies the English legal speech acts into regulatives, declarations, behabitives, verdictives, directives and requestives.Almost every research on a specific language phenomenon has its own purposes, which can be generalized as follows: (1) to illustrate an abstract language system or to verify a linguistic theory based on the whole language; (2) to solve the problems of language life. Therefore, the overall aims of the thesis are to analyze the manifestation of English legal speech acts, to exam or certify the speech act theory in legal register and to reveal the principles, the functions and the characteristics of legal speech acts.To achieve those objectives, the thesis first gives a brief introduction to the speech act theory, the present research states both at home and abroad and the significance of the study. Then an overview on English legal texts is made to lay a foundation for the analysis of English legal speech acts. Finally, a full discussion on the classification, the functions and the characteristics of English legal speech acts is presented.