Statutes and contracts: An analysis of legal speech acts in the English language of the law
The Aarhus School of Business, Department of English, Fuglesangs All~ 4, DK-8210 Aarhus V, Denmark
Abstract
防御的近义词猪血的做法大全家常菜This paper is concerned with the language ud in legal speech acts in legislative texts and contracts in the field of English Contract Law. The central objects of study are regulative functions with a particular view to establishing realization patterns of the rhetorical functions of directive and commissive acts. The findings show that the language of the law characteris-tically lects patterns of regulatives distinct from, for example, the patterns typically lected in everyday conversational English. The characteristics of the language of the law can be interpreted within the adherence to legal institutions, as well as in terms of the face redress required by the socio-pragmatic situation.
男生怎么画1. Background
The field of legal language within the written medium is unique with regard to
思念一个人的句子distinctive lexical features, such as technical terms, archaic expressions, etc., and it
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is renowned for its syntactic complexity, which has given ri to a number of stud-
ies of the aspects (e, e.g. Danet, 1985: 278-287). However, with the exception
of a few studies (e.g. Kurzon, 1986; Werther and Helmern, 1989), little attention
has been given to pragmatics and politeness in written legal discour. In the field of pragmatics (including work on politeness phenomena), rearch has been concerned primarily with oral discour, often bad on non-quential hypo-thetical data, and very few studies are concerned with pragmatics and politeness in written discour (e, e.g. Myers, 1989; Pilegaard, 1990). This paper prents a pragmatic study of a highly specialized discour, viz. the language of authentic legislative texts and contracts, which are analyzed for socio-pragmatic occurrence and pragmalinguistic realization of regulative acts. Politeness is discusd within a consideration of the imposition of regulati
ve acts. This rearch has been financed partly by The Danish Rearch Council for the Humanities and I would like to express my gratitude for their support. The article is bad on my findings published in
preliminary versions as Trosborg (1991) and Blom and Trosborg (1992). tionship which exists between the legislative power and the citizens, in which ca the former has the authority to make rules for citizens to obey in order to maintain
law and order. An empirical question to be answered in this connection is whether this difference in authority results in a difference, for example in directness levels, between the two kinds of the law, i.e. between the language ud in legislation compared to the lan-guage employed in private law (contracts and deeds).
Commission shall be paid on a quarterly basis and shall be bad on the previous quarter's nett sales. (4-001 )
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Employees shall work such overtime as the Company from time to time thinks necessary according to the needs of its business. (4-014)
As in (4-001), the illocution is frequently constructed by the application of pas-sivization involving agent suppression, and/or by the u of non-human subject. Tho are prominent features of the legal register, and may be explained in terms of
face redress in order to reduce the face-threat involved in issuing a directive.
4.1.2. Prohibitions
In the regulation of behaviour by means of prohibitions, the modal shall is ud
almost exclusively (6.0% out of 6.8% of the strategies obrved):
the Reprentative shall not be entitled to enter into any contract or obligation on behalf of the Company without the express written connt of the Company being first obtained. (4-016)
Nothing in this Clau shall confer any right upon the Distributor to return Products purchad by it pur-suant hereto or to refu or delay payment for them. (4-068)
The officer shall have no entitlement to any further period of holiday with or without remuneration unless expressly agreed between the company and the officer. (4-006)
The three examples reflect some of the different types of negation which were men-
tioned in 2.2.1.2.
4.2. Rights
4.2,1. Permission
In contracts, a symmetrical relation holds between the two parties, either of which
治疗糖尿病的偏方is able to grant permission to the other party:
蔑视的近义词The Hirer may determine the hiring at any time by giving one month's previous notice in writing expir-ing on one of the days appointed for payment of rent (4-015)
The Owner hereby grants to the Distributor [...] the sole and exclusive right to licence, sub-licence and generally to market, distribute and support the Software (4-047)
The company hereby gives the officer permission to reside with his wife and children in the dwelling-hou and premis [...] as the company's reprentative (4-006)