The increased exchanges of construction endeavors between China and her international counterparts have highlighted the importance of construction contracts, underlining the significance of the FIDIC Conditions for its wide adoption worldwide. However, a language perspective has yet to be adopted when exploring construction contracts. This study aims to uncover the language features of the General Conditions in the Red Book of FIDIC Conditions from the scope of the Multi-dimensional approach, which is conducive to a better understanding of construction contracts. In this study, salient language features of the General Conditions were uncovered in a visualized manner through the employment of the Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT). It was found that nouns and normalization were frequently used in the General Conditions, with high frequencies of attributive adjectives, total prepositional phrases, predictive modals, and passive voice (agentless passives and by-passives). As to the general genre features of the Red Book, it was found to possess the features of being information-oriented, non-narrative, context-independent, self-assertive, abstract, and non-real-time-oriented. Those features further render the conditions formality in style, explicitness in communicative purposes, objectivity in stance, and authority in position. Such findings interrelate with each other and corroborate each other. They are of great professional and pedagogical significance for non-native practitioners.
Biber, D. (1995). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge University Press.
Cao, Y., & Xiao, R. (2013). A Multi-dimensional Contrastive Study of English Abstracts by Native and Nonnative Writers. Corpora, 8(2), 209–234.
Carlo, G. (2015). Diachronic and synchronic aspects of legal English. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Cheng, H. (2009). A stylistic analysis of English contract for international engineering projects. Taiyuan University of Technology.
Cui, J., & Cui, J. (2022). A Guide to Written English for Contract Management in International Construction Projects. China Machine Press.
Dai, R. (2020). English for International Construction Engineering and Management. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press Inc.
Heidari Kaidan, Z., Jalilifar, A., & Don, A. (2021). On the significance of disciplinary variation in research articles: Perspectives from nominalization. Cogent Education, 8(1), 1890872.
Li, S, He, B, & Kong, J. (2020). Legal Risk of Construction Contracts: Analysis and Countermeasures. China Building Industry Press.
Liu, J. (2008). Analysis of FIDIC contract features in terms of functional stylistics. Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.
Mu, C. (2021). A Multidimensional Contrastive Analysis of Linguistic Features between International and Local Biology Journal English Research Articles. Scientometrics, 126(9), 7901–7916.
Ning, X., & Wu, W. (2019). English for project management. China Machine Press.
Nini, A. (2019). The multi-dimensional analysis tagger. In T. Berber Sardinha, & M. Veirano Pinto, (Eds.), Multi-Dimensional Analysis: Research Methods and Current Issues, 67-94. Bloomsbury Academic.
Padhy, J., Jagannathan, M., & Kumar Delhi, V. S. (2021). Application of Natural Language Processing to Automatically Identify Exculpatory Clauses in Construction Contracts. Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction, 13(4), 04521035.
Rasmussen, K. W., & Engberg, J. (2017). Genre analysis of legal discourse. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 12(22), 113.
Riaz, A., Hussain, A., & Ud Din, Z. (2023). Strategy for Effective Claim Management Based on a FIDIC Derivative Contract. Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction, 15(4), 05023002.
Wang, M., & Li, W. (2016). English for International Engineering Management Practice. China Communications Press Co., Ltd.
Xie, S. (2020). Multidimensional Analysis of Master Thesis Abstracts: A Diachronic Perspective. Scientometrics, 123(2), 861–881.
