Abstract: International trade documentation, as a foundation factor in the international business communication, directs the whole transaction process and the performance of contracts. Based on the previous academic researches, this thesis focuses on studying the stylistic language features of international trade documentation. Adopting the corpus approach as research methodology, this study makes both of the quantitative and qualitative analysis on lexical level, syntactical level and textual level of international trade documentation. The International Trade Documentation corpus is established as the main research subject for this study, while Brown corpus functions as the auxiliary corpus. All the data discussed in this thesis are calculated and analyzed by running the software AntConc and VFP, which is thought to be scientific, reliable and objective. The research results show that the stylistic features of international trade documentation are quite different from that of general English. This research has some implications for the study of international trade documentation, and it can help those international trade practitioners effectively write the documents.

Key words: corpus; stylistic features; international trade documentation

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction1

1.1 International Trade Documentation

1.2 Layout of the Study

2. Literature Review and Theoretical Frameworks..2

 2.1 Brief Introduction to Corpus

 2.2 Overview of Stylistics

  2.2.1 Introduction to Stylistics

  2.2.2 Introduction to Stylistic Features  

 2.3 Overseas and Domestic Research Status 

3. Research Methodology.6

 3.1 Brief Introduction to Self-established Corpus 

 3.2 Research Instrument

 3.3 Research Procedures

4. Analysis on Stylistic Features of International Trade Documents.7

 4.1 Stylistic Features on Lexical Level 

  4.1.1 High Frequency of Specialized Vocabulary

  4.1.2 Average Word Length 

 4.2 Stylistic Features on Syntactical Level 

  4.2.1 Frequent Use of Long Sentences

  4.2.2 Frequent Use of Declarative Sentences

  4.2.3 Application of That Clause

 4.3 Stylistic Features on Textual Level

  4.3.1 Cohesive Devices

  4.3.2 Modality Revealed by Modal verbs

5. Conclusion.15

 5.1 Major Findings

 5.2 Limitations and Suggestions

Bibliography…17

Acknowledgements..18