Linguistic peculiarities of contract

e.g. Very often the parties amicably agree upon a settlement of the claim in question.

The Sellers and the Buyers shall take all measures to settle amicably any disputes.

So, in contracts a person can come across a definite number of words and word combinations which make up lexical peculiarities of their texts. They all are rather bookish and belong to formal style of written English, not being used in informal English and rarely used in spoken formal English.

 

Conclusion

 

The research has allowed to reveal a specific character of contract as a type of business correspondence. The first, and most important of all, reason for considering contract business correspondence is formal style of its language. It means that in texts of contracts we can find a bright example of formal written English.

Formal style of English has such main features as conventionality of expression, absence of emotiveness, encoded character of the language and general syntactic mode of combining several ideas within one sentence. All that is revealed in texts of contracts through their vocabulary, grammar and style.

Stylistic peculiarities of business correspondence are based on the following factors. The syntactic pattern of business documents is one long sentence which consists of separate numbered clauses divided by commas and semicolons. Every clause is capitalised. That is done to show the equality of items of a document.

Written business English goes impersonal style. It means there are no direct addressees, passive constructions are used instead of active, a great number of amount words, modal verbs might and could instead of can and may. This all is done for a document to sound tentative and tactful.

No connectors are used in business correspondence as they convey a little information. In formal style  whom is used instead of who. If there is a need in prepositions, they go before whom, which is not typical of informal style at all.

Stylistic peculiarities of formal written English also imply usage of words in their primary logic meaning and absence of contextual meanings. Formal English is characterised by usage of special terms. They all are precise in meaning and rather bookish. Among them there are a lot of words of the Latin, Greek and French origin, replaced in spoken English by words of the Anglo-Saxon origin.

These factors make up the standard of documents’ writing. Special forms help to focus readers’ attention on major information and simplify process of making a deal.

There are the following theoretical problems in studying the problem. First of all, there is a difficulty to draw a line between formal and informal English, as the latter influences formal style greatly. Sentences in documents are too long and bookish to be used freely. Documents are devoid of personal pronouns I, we, you. The language of documents lacks force and vividness to keep strict to the point. Meanwhile, it is hard to keep one’s attention while reading them due to this trait.

Contract is a type of a business document presenting an agreement for the delivery of goods, services, etc., approved and signed by the Buyer and the Seller. Its aim is to state conditions binding two parties in a deal and to reach agreement between them.

Contract has a written standard form. It also has some essential clauses, such as contract number, subject of contract, quality and price of goods, delivery terms, packing and marking, transport conditions, arbitration, force majeure, judicial addressees of the sides and their signatures. Some articles may be supplemented and altered. Every clause has its own specifics.

Besides a contract form, there are other forms related to it: Supplement to Contract, Order and Order Confirmation. The Master Pattern as a basis for standardised forms of enquires and offers is used at pre-contract stages of a deal. Contract is supported with requests, remindings, verifications of different terms, guarantee, waving inspection letters, etc.

Contracts differ in the point of deliverance, the way of deliverance, payment terms. Delivery terms are marked with the International Commercial Terms (Incoterms), which are mostly abbreviated. Abbreviations serve as signs of the code of documents.

Contracts can be export and import (orders). Import contracts include harder conditions towards sellers than export ones. As textual varieties contracts can be administrative-managerial, financial-economical, advertising, scientific-technical and artistic-publicational by sphere of circulation. The subject of a deal may be ordering and purchasing of oil products, machinery tools, grain, timber, and whatever possible.

As a type of a document, contract fixes some information. Stylistic peculiarities of contract are concreteness, conciseness, clearness of the idea, high capacity of information, strict logic, clear rhythm of sentences, word repetitions which accent the main idea, no connotations, cliches and stamps, usage of monosemantic words and words in their direct logical meaning, division of text into chapters, paragraphs, points, presence of definite syntactic structure.

The major difference of contract from other business papers is that it is made up by two sides, and information in them is approved by them both. All informational details are not suitable. Contract is formal, complete, clear, concrete, correct and concise. It is also neat and has an attractive arrangement. The tone of contract is neutral and devoid of both pompous and informal language. It means there are no colloquial words and expressions, idioms, phrasal verbs. Abbreviations are not used if possible. Full forms of words are preferable. Sums are written both in figures and words.

Grammatical peculiarities of contact are characterised by high usage of verbals. Its text is presented mostly with infinitive and participial constructions. Among infinitive constructions are singled out those ones with the Simple / Indefinite and Perfect Infinitives as adjuncts to active and passive (only in newspapers and contracts) verbs and the Simple Infinitives as complex adjuncts to active verbs.

Participial constructions are of the following types. Participle I refers to a noun in the General Case which goes before the participle. Perfect Participles are rare. Participle II either follows or precedes a noun.

As for the tense-aspect forms of the English verb, the Indefinite and Perfect tenses, both in the Active and Passive voices, are used instead of analytical forms. The past tenses are rarely used.

Shall and should are used with all  numbers and persons. Omitting if in subordinate clauses is another feature of contract. The definite article is used with ships, the words Buyers and Sellers. It is not used, though, after prepositions of the Latin origin per and ex, with nouns followed by a number in sizes, codes, etc.

Lexical peculiarities of contract are the following. The lexicon of contract is stable. All words are used in their exact meaning. There is no emotional colouring of words. Practically in every contact there are compounds with where-, here-, there- (whereas, thereby, herewith, thereto, etc.), hereinafter, the aforesaid, phrases: (it’s) understood and agreed, including without limitation, assignees and licensees, without prejudice, as between us, solely on condition that, on conditions that, on understanding that, subject to, and others. In contracts are used words of the Latin origin: pro rata, pari passu, inferior, superior, ultima, proxima, extra, and French words: force majeure, amicably.

In such a way, all the formulated tasks have been solved and the purpose of the research has been reached. Linguistic peculiarities of contract, a kind of written business English, have been studied as groups of stylistic, grammatical and lexical peculiarities. 

 

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