ABSTRACT
In practice, the occurrence of inconsistency in interpretation of the contract English has resulted in a good few cases of disputes. In essence, it is largely due to the draftsman's failure to have a deep-in understanding of the underlying features of the contract language, which might lead to the ambiguities and uncertainties of the contract wording. This paper tries to analyze the linguistic features of English business contracts at the morphological, syntactical and discourse levels respectively with a view to rendering a help in the reading and drafting the contracts.
Keywords：contract English ; language features; reading anddrafting
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Literature review 2
2.1 Study of contract 2
2.2 Study of legal English 3
2.3 Study of contract English 3
2.4 The study of the stylistic features of contract English in China 4
3. The language features of contract English 6
3.1 The lexical features 6
3.3 The sentential features 11
4. Implications 15
4.1 Implication for reading contract English 15
4.2 Implication for drafting contract 16
5. Conclusion 17
Acknowledgements 18
References 19
