A Corpus-based Stylistic Study Of English International Sales Contracts

Nowadays, along with the rapid development of international transaction,English International Sales Contracts become an important mean of the promotion ofinternational trade. English is the universal language in writing a contract. Therefore,the study of English International Sales Contracts should not only focus on legallanguage, but also from English linguistics.In the learning of English International Sales Contracts, some learners may findthat there are some differences between English International Sales Contracts writtenby non-English speakers and English International Sales Contracts written by Englishnative speakers. In order to find out the differences, the present thesis carries out ananalysis on the English International Sales Contracts written by non-English speakersand the English International Sales Contracts written by English native speakers andintends to find out:(1)the stylistic similarities and differences between the EnglishInternational Sales Contracts written by non-English speakers and the EnglishInternational Sales Contracts written by English native speakers;(2)the stylisticfeatures of English International Sales Contracts. In this thesis, the EnglishInternational Sales Contracts written by non-English speakers and the EnglishInternational Sales Contracts written by English native speakers are chosen as theresearch materials and two corpora: English International Sales Contracts Written byNon-English Speakers Corpus (EISCWNES Corpus)and English International SalesContracts Written by English Native Speakers Corpus(EISCWENS Corpus) are built,each of which contains150,000words or so.Based on the relevant theories of stylistics and the methodology of corpus-basedapproach, this thesis is to make a comprehensive analysis and comparison on thestylistic features of English International Sales Contracts in the two corpora with theapplication of modern analytical software. The research results show:(1) the two letterwords are frequently used in the two corpora; for one-letter words to five-letter words, the ratio in EISCWNES Corpus is higher than that in EISCWENS Corpus. However,for six-letter words to ten-letter words, the ratio of EISCWENS Corpus is higher thanthat in EISCWNES Corpus. Nouns, adjectives, verbs and pronouns are found to be themost frequently used types in the two corpora, and the ratio of these four types inEISCWENS Corpus is higher than that in EISCWNES Corpus.(2) the averagesentence lengths of English International Sales Contracts in the two corpora are longerthan that in the general-use texts; the average sentence length in the EISCWNESCorpus is a little longer than that in the EISCWENS Corpus. Declarative sentence isthe only commonly used sentence pattern in the two corpora. Attributive clause is themost frequently used clause in the two corpora, while the use of different kinds ofclauses in the EISCWENS Corpus is more balanced, which mainly employsattributive clause, adverbial clause, subjective clause, objective clause and predictiveclause. However, the EISCWNES Corpus mainly adopts attributive clause andadverbial clause with less objective clause and predictive clause.(3) modal verbs arenot frequently used in the two corpora so as not to bring too many personal opinionsto contracts. The EISCWENS Corpus tends to use more modal verbs. Both of the twocorpora employ conjunctions to increase the cohesion of those English InternationalSales Contracts; conjunctions are more frequently used in EISCWNES Corpus tomake contracts more cohesive than those in the EISCWENS Corpus. The presentresearch has some implications for the teaching of business English, and it can helpthose non-English speakers effectively write English contracts.