A Contrastive Study On The Cohesive Devices In Legislative Texts

Cohesion device, as one of the essential elements of discourse, forms a common feature of text. At the present, the contrastive study of cohesion between English and Chinese received extensive concern from linguistics at home and abroad. However, most of the studies focus on cohesive devices in literary works rather than in legislative texts. As one of the resources of international law, international convention is a special form of legislative texts which have the same legal effect and are equally authentic in both English and Chinese versions. Therefore, the result of the contrastive study of international convention between Chinese and English versions is authoritative and convincing. The author of the present study intends to research on cohesive devices in international conventions and choose Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and other eight conventions concerning international public law, international private law and economic law to make the contrastive study in Chinese and English versions. What are the differences in cohesion between the English versions and the Chinese versions? What elements have caused these differences? Bearing these questions in mind the author carries out the following research.The research aims to contrast the cohesive devices in international conventions of both Chinese and English versions, to explore the main cohesive devices in their informational structure, to analyze the features of similarities and dissimilarities, to provide a theoretical framework as well as practical reference for analyzing international convention from a linguistic perspective, and to promote cooperation between linguists and legal experts so as to better understand the common aspects and differences between the source and target languages.The research conducted in this thesis can be roughly divided into two parts. Chapter two forms the first part, which is a literature review. Among the contents discussed in this part are research on the features of hypotaxis-streesed and parataxis-stressed languages, international convention and a brief review on cohesion analysis at home and abroad. Through the discussion, the author provides a theoretical framework for the thesis. This chapter mainly discusses that cultural differences caused different thinking patterns of western and Chinese people. The Chinese have formed implicit language structure, while the English have formed explicit language structure. International conventions are written agreements that are concluded by international subjects in the aspects of politics, economy, culture, technology, etc. It is a formal text regulating rights and duties and expresses complicated ideas as well as precise logic with many long and complex structure sentences. However, Chinese conveys its logical order by the implication of words and sentences rather than the lexical and grammatical cohesive devices while English are labeled with the explicit lexical and grammatical cohesion. International conventions do reflect the language dissimilarities. The author of this paper analyzes the dissimilarities of cohesive devices based on Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory in Chapter three.The second part of the paper is composed by Chapter three and Chapter four. After exploring the relationship among culture, thinking pattern, language and cohesion, Chapter three analyzes cohesive devices in conventions according to the theory frame discussed in the first part. The author reveals discrepancies in Chinese and English international conventions by exploring three cohesive devices with distinct diversity: lexical cohesion, reference and conjunction.. Chapter four is the last part of this paper. The author at first describes the questions discussed in the front part, and then indicates the following contributions: firstly, the research enhances the relationship between cohesion theory and legislative texts, further proving the practicality of cohesion theory. Secondly, the author hopes that cohesive differences in Chinese and English international conventions can be found through the contrastive study in order to enhance communications across the cultures. Thirdly, this paper indicates the research limitations of inadequate research materials and cohesive devices. At last, the author puts forward suggestions for further study of cohesive devices in Chinese and English international conventions.