Abstract

This thesis is a study on the syntactic and stylistic features of legal English. Legal English is one of legal languages. It is a kind of professional English, which is produced by legislative and judiciary activities in countries where English is official language. Legal English is a branch of English and it belongs to the scope of applied linguistics. First of all, law is an independent subject, so it is inevitable that there are some legal terminologies in legal English whose meanings are different from those in common English. Secondly, the unique function of law determines that laws, regulations or other legal instruments must be precise and accurate. Expanded explanations and analogies are forbidden in legal English. So, legal English has its own syntactic and stylistic features. This paper focuses on sentence structures and tense to study the syntactic features of legal English. The stylistic features are discussed by the etymon of legal English and the style of choice of words.

Key words: legal English, syntactic, stylistic, features

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction1

  1.1 The definition of syntax1

  1.2 The definition of style.1

  1.3 The definition of legal English.1

  1.4 The meanings of the study of legal English2

2. An analysis on the syntactic features2

  2.1 The use of declarative sentences.2 

  2.2 The use of complete sentences.3

  2.3 The use of long sentences.4

     2.3.1 Adverbial clause.5

     2.3.2 Attributive clause.5

  2.4 The use of simple present tense.6

3. An analysis on the stylistic features7

3.1Etymon of legal English7

3.1.1Latin7

3.1.2French.7 

3.1.3Archaisms.8

  3.2 The style of choice of words9

3.2.1 The coexistence of accurate words and fuzzy words.9

3.2.2 Terms of law10

     3.2.3 Synonyms in pairs10

  3.3 The stylistic features reflects by words11

     3.3.1 Precise and accurate.11

     3.3.2 Formal and authoritative.11

     3.3.3 Concise and explicit12

4. Application.12 

 4.1 Being beneficial to legal English study.12

 4.2 Being beneficial to the translation of legal documents12

5. Conclusion13

References.14