商务合同英语的文体特征

The business contract is a document with legal position, which is signed in business activities. Therefore, English for business contract is the language that formed and used in business activities, on the basis of the English language with the characteristics of business English and law English. It is also the language function changing style with special use and self-regulation in the long-term using according to some language factors. English for business contract is not the special language material and private grammar system but the language area with special use in business. The American linguist Martin Joes offers the five classification methods of the regular degree of language in his writing “The Five Clocks” according to the some factors that reflected the formal degree in language using. That is frozen style, formal style, consultative style, casual or informal style and intimate style. It is generally think that the business contract belongs to the frozen style, which is a kind of the highest formal degree in the literary style. So it has the clearly stylistic characteristics in the phrase, sentence construction and passage.

1.词汇特征(Vocabulary Characteristics)

1.1 Use technical terms of business, literary words and juxtaposed words in Business:

The technical terms have the feature of international generally use, accurate meaning, clarity stylistic characteristic, have no private affection. In order to describe the variety documents of each dealing step within business activity, the English for business contract used a great deal of clearly expressed technical terms of business.

e.g Within the validity period of Contract, Licensee shall not disclose or divulge know-how to any third party without prior written consent of Licensor. The meaning of know- how is very accurate, especially means all the technical information, design, technical specification, production process and other information of the production, the usage and the sales of the concerning products, it can’t confuse with other phrases.

1.2 Use technical terms of law: The law terms include the common phrases 3 in law. Such as: action (lawsuit which refers to a legal proceeding instituted by one party against another), party (a person or group involved in a legal proceeding), decision, final etc.

e.g In cases of losses caused by a breach of contract, the financial responsibility shall be borne by the party who has breached the contract. “The economic responsibility” in law is the responsibility of breaking one’s promise, especially means the “compensating loss”, “paying penalty” and “paying the interest of money”, this professional phrases have the feature of law.

1.3 The application of clarity expressed literary words: The English for