Lexical Cohesive Devices In FIDIC Conditions Of Contract For Construction

A contract is a kind of agreement with powerful binding forces. Once a contract is signed by both parties, this contract bears legal effect. Therefore, a contract has the style features of legal texts. As an international contract, the FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction also possesses the features of legal texts. FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction enjoys high status in international engineering construction, which combines engineering technology, laws, economy and management. FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction is honored as "the Bible" in international engineering construction. Thus, it is significant to understand and translate this contract with exactness and completeness.Cohesion has been widely researched by many scholars of academic circles since Halliday and Hasan proposed the cohesion theory in 1976. As one of the important parts of text analysis, cohesion can be classified into two categories:grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Lexical cohesion achieves textural cohesion and coherence with lexical choices, which is one of the prime devices that create the textural coherence. Lexical cohesive devices include repetition, synonyms or near-synonyms, antonyms, superordinate and collocation.Based on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory, this thesis aims to explore the features and frequencies of lexical cohesive devices applied in FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction with a qualitative and quantitative analysis, and to provide some suggestions for understanding and interpretation of this contract, or even for drafting other contracts.After a detailed analysis of the data, the author has the following findings:first, repetition device is the most frequently used in FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction among the four devices being calculated, which takes up 67% of the total, followed by synonyms or near-synonyms, antonyms, and superordinate. The device of collocation is employed throughout FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction, which is an indispensable lexical device in this contract. Second, the analysis of lexical cohesive devices in FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction is beneficial to the reading, understanding and translating of this contract and other FIDIC documents. Third, the provisions in FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction are independent but at the same time they are interrelated, and understanding of the lexical cohesive devices in this contract contributes to the understanding of the provisions. The author thinks that understanding the rules of the employment of the lexical cohesive devices in FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction can benefit the researchers and users of the contract...