Linguistic Pecularities Of Contracts in English

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Goods in international trade are transported with the help of multimodal (door-to-door) shipment. In contracts delivery and acceptance terms are marked with the International Commercial Terms (Incoterms) [10, P.16]. So, contracts can be classified in accordance with the way of delivery. Most of Incoterms are represented as abbreviations.

The usage of abbreviations, conventional symbols and contractions is typical of all kinds of documents. Abbreviations are abundant, and there are special dictionaries to decode them. They serve as signs of the code supposed to be known only to the “initiated” [3, P.316].

On the whole, there are 14 official Incoterms of deliverance. They denote:

The point of deliverance. EX Works means that the seller’s only responsibility is to make the goods available at his premises. EX Ship means that the seller shall make the goods available to the buyer on board the ship at the destination named in the sales contract. EX Quay means that the seller makes the goods available to the buyer on the quay at the destination named in the sales contract.

The way of deliverance. FOB means Free on Board. The goods are placed on board a ship by the seller at a port of shipment named in the sales contract. FAS means Free Alongside Ship. That means that goods should be placed alongside the ship to fulfil the seller’s obligations. FOR / FOT mean Free on Rail / Free on Truck. Truck here relates to the railway wagons, and that makes these abbreviations synonymous. FOB Airport is based on the same main principle as the ordinary FOB term. The seller fulfils his obligations by delivering the goods to the air carrier at the airport of departure.

Payment terms. C & F means Cost and Fright. The seller must pay the costs and fright necessary to bring the goods to the named destination, but the risk of loss or damage to the goods is transferred from the seller to the buyer when the goods pass the ship’s rail in the port of shipment. CIF means Cost, Insurance and Fright. This term is basically the same as C & F but with the addition that the seller has to procure marine insurance against the risk of loss or damage to the goods during the carriage.

Thus, in Chapter 1 we have made an attempt to clarify some items of the topic. They are the following:

The nature of the English of documents writing is determined by its stylistic realisation in written English. The style of official documents possesses its own features which are reflected in standardised forms of different documents. They are peculiarities of the vocabulary, grammar and syntactic constructions, which are the subject of consideration in the practical part of this paper.

The main problem of writing contracts is embodied in the notion of stylistic use. Formal style of business English is rather hard to obtain and to follow. It remains mostly in written form, and its peculiarities should be strictly observed. Some theoretical problems of its functioning have already been considered. Nevertheless, informal English influences it greatly, and even in routine papers we may find deviations from the accepted form.

It can be explained by the fact that business is made by people, and not robots. A person’s individuality, as well as emotions and feelings, more and more often peer into a cool and logical world of business, creating new problems and possibilities of business English functioning in texts of contracts and other documents.

We have also defined contract as a typical realisation of formal business English which possesses the same stylistic features and follows the same goals as other kinds of business correspondence.

Реферат опубликован: 28/01/2009