A Brief Study On The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning In International Business Contracts

At present, China as a developing country with ceaseless changes and improvements has gradually staged on the international stage which facilitates the emergence of international business and trade in enormous dimensions largely falling into tangible commodities and intangible service. Thus, the application of business letters is of critical significance during those processes. To acquire a better comprehension of this type of writing, many scholars have conducted various researches on this genre from different perspectives such as the context of situation, the register or the linguistic features. However, the international business contracts have not drawn enough attention, especially to the dimension of the expression of interpersonal meaning, which is of equal importance with business negotiation and business letters to establish relationship. In actual effect, contracts represent the process and result of the communication and interaction among the parties involved. Its vital position can be proved by the proposition of Thompson who claims that one of the main purposes of communication is to interact with other people and establish or maintain proper social links with them (Thompson,2000:38). To put it in a simple way, the function of interpersonal meaning is to put the ideas and opinions across indirectly or implicitly in order to either influence the attitude and the behavior of the other people or inform them with certain information. International business contracts have their unique characteristics in this respect, especially in the expression and the special function.In this study, the author has made a tentative exploration to the linguistic characteristics and devices which represent the expression of interpersonal meaning in the international business contracts. The interpersonal model of Halliday and the evaluation theory of Martin are applied as the theoretical basis among which the former one demonstrates a dominant position while the latter one acts as supplement. Specifically, the author chooses27samples of international business contracts as the resources of study and analyzes them in detail from the dimension of mood system, modality, person system and evaluation system. These contracts are chosen from the textbooks and internet most of which are proved to be valid and original. In order to acquire a more comprehensive and exhaustive analysis, the author has not only obtained data from the whole samples as reference but also adopted6samples of them to analyze in detail.Through the analysis, some findings are concluded from the lexical level and syntactic level. As for the former one, four points are most outstanding:(1) the modal adjuncts and conjunctive adjuncts are employed to make the expression more legible in terms of the rights and responsibilities which are critical to the success of the trade and the maintenance of long-term cooperative relationship;(2) the wide use of modal auxiliaries manifests a kind of respect and kindness to each other, which corresponds with the essential feature of formality while keeping the sense of kindness;(3) the formal addresses rather than personal pronouns, such as he or she, are stipulated in the beginning of the contracts which will then be applied throughout the whole content in order to avoid vague indication and ambiguity;(4) the evaluation system, especially those positive evaluative vocabularies, plays a significant role in the expression of attitudes, feelings and judgments. As for the syntactic level, it is obvious that conditional clauses which make the content more integrative, more serious and less rigid are of special popularity. It is safely to reach the conclusion that this study is meaningful in the research of interpersonal meaning in international business contracts which are critical in the rapid economic globalization. In terms of the theoretical aspect, it may draw attention to the research of interpersonal meaning with the combination of interpersonal model of Halliday and evaluation system of Martin. As for the practical implication, the present study will be of direct use in that the boom of international business activities is irreversible which demands better contracts to facilitate more successful trade and transaction. Beside, it sheds some lights on the teaching of business English in this aspect.