A contrastive study on contracts for consulting services in english and vietnamese

This study is aimed to explore the standards frequently used by foreigners and Vietnamese people in the course of making contracts for consulting services by an analysis of contracts of

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

(NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC HỢP ĐỒNG DỊCH VỤ TƯ VẤN

TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

PHẠM THỊ THANH NHÀN

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON CONTRACTS FOR CONSULTING SERVICES IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC HỢP ĐỒNG DỊCH VỤ TƯ VẤN

TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “A contrastive study on contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

A special word of thanks also goes to Mr Nguyen Van Huy, project’s director and technical staff under Project Management Unit of Medium Cities Development Project for their sincere assistance and permission for the collection and reproduction of English sample contracts for consulting services I am also deeply indebted to all other friends and colleague for their enthusiasm about finding Vietnamese contracts for consulting services

Many thanks are also given to Mr John Cooney and Ms Toko Kato, the World Bank’s independent consultants for their instruction and provision of useful reference on laws and legal documents while the work was in progress

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family members, especially

my mother, who always beside encourages and supports me in all the time, for their inspiration and unconditional love I would like to dedicate this work to them

This study is aimed to explore the standards frequently used by foreigners and Vietnamese people in the course of making contracts for consulting services by an analysis of contracts of various sorts in English and Vietnamese The major theoretical basis that the study bases itself on is Rhetorical Structure Theory written by Mann and Thompton and Cohesion theory by Halliday and Hasan The research starts by analyzing consulting contracts in terms of structure and cohesion, in order to provide a deeper insight into the important role of the structure and cohesive devices in contracts for consulting services When the analysis is done it compares the structure of contracts for consulting services of different kinds in terms of structure and cohesion to identify the similarities and differences between contracts of the two languages The result of this study may help contract-makers, students draw up and understand more contracts for consulting services For this purpose, implications are put forward for both the business community and business contract learning and translating

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

JICA: Japan International Cooperation Agency

WB: World Bank

ADB: Asian Development Bank

PMU: Project Management Unit

MCDP: Medium Cities Development Project

TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership

FTA: Free Trade Agreements

AEC: ASEAN Economic Community

RST: Rhetorical Structure Theory

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table

Table 4.1 Kind of sentences (in the body of English contracts) 39 Table 4.2 The average frequency of cohesive devices found in English contracts for consulting services

73

2.2.2.1 The concepts of Discourse and Discourse analysis 9

2.2.2.8 Definition of contract and its properties 22

4.1 The features of English contracts for consulting services 34

4.2.2.1 The realization of the two aspects of cohesion 58

4.3 The similarities and differences between contracts for consulting

services in English and Vietnamese

64

4.4.2 Implications on business contract translating and learning 76

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale of the research

Vietnam has made steady progress on transparency in the last 10 years and World Bank (WB) is playing main role of providing loans for development works to member countries, especially to developing countries like Vietnam The WB provides long-term loans for various development projects of 5 to

20 years duration with the main goals: to increase economic growth, strengthen Vietnam’s capacity to deal with the opportunities and challenges presented by the rapid urbanization that will continue in Vietnam for the

next 20 years

The choice of this topic is prompted by my experience with translating the contracts for consulting services funded by the WB from English into Vietnamese It is a fact that the making contracts by foreigners does not enter one-to-one correspondence with that by Vietnamese people as the number of international organizations providing loans and technical assistance to Viet Nam as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),

WB, Asian Development Bank (ADB) etc is ever-increasingly since the international standards for consulting contracts are a relatively new area in Vietnam; In the course of my work, what becomes obvious is the fact that there is a wide variety, and of course, deviation from the so-called acceptable standard ones Our assumption is also that the rise of Vietnamese contracts in general has been influenced by outside factors Thus many difficulties and problems, of course, has arisen

The study aims at providing the investigation into similarities and difficulties between consultancy contracts in English and Vietnamese as a

contribution to the field of discourse analysis to help learners, researchers and translators

1.2 Aims of the research

The aim of the study is to carry out an investigation into the use of a collection of 10 consulting contracts frequently used by both foreigners and Vietnamese people and then is applied in the study to analyze and compare the similarities and differences to gain insights into the structure of consulting contracts Fianally, the research aims to suggest some solutions to improve students’/ translators’ capabilities in translating English texts

1.3 Objectives of the research

To fulfill the above aims, the objectives of the study are (i) analyzing consulting contracts in terms of structure and cohesion, in order to provide a deeper insight into the important role of the structure and cohesive devices

in contracts for consulting services (ii) comparing contracts for consulting service in English and those in Vietnamese with an aim to investigate the similarities and differences between them and based on the analysis and comparison to gain insights into the structure of consulting agreement, and (iii) suggesting some solutions to improve students’/ translators’ capabilities

in translating English texts

1.4 Scope of the study

As the exploitation of features of contracts is quite huge and diversified, and the number of contracts has been increasing year after year, the analysis is supposed to be selective rather than comprehensive in following senses:

(i) Academic scope

 Contracts for consulting services in all types will be a very broad research, so it is impossible to cover all The study only focuses on five of the most popular types of texts, they are: Consulting Contracts for detailed design service; Consulting Contracts for construction supervision service; Consulting Contracts for audit service; Consulting Contracts for technical assistance service; Consulting Contracts for monitoring on environmental and social

 In addition, due to the time constraints and within the framework

of an M.A thesis, our analysis is confined to only the structure and cohesion, particularly the three types of grammatical cohesive devices of Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunctions and given the frequency of appearance of lexical Reiteration, only three categories of Repetition, Synonymy and Antonym are investigated (ii) Social scope

 As mentioned above, only 10 consulting contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese will be focused on The contracts mainly come from a World Bank Borrower - Medium Cities Development Project in Vietnam during its selection process

of Consultants These documents are prepared for the project and are applicable under the methods of selection of consultants described in the WB’s Guidelines However, the English used in these contracts can be deemed to be authentic English

1.5 Significance of the research

Theoretically, the study is based on the tenets of discourse analysis which these days are of great importance to language research in general and to language rendering in particular This thesis is particularly serving as a reference or guide to those who want to master the structure of consulting contracts discourse in terms of structure and cohesion

Practically, accounting for the need to recognize the international standards for consulting contracts frequently used by both foreigners and Vietnamese people, the study will bring useful and significant knowledge to language users via analysis and comparison together with the implication of the study gaining insights into the structure of consulting agreements

Vietnam is well on the way of becoming a developed country The Vietnamese people are determined to do what they can to ensure the country quickly moves away from poverty and backwardness and with support by international organizations The study also tries to help interpreters/ translators of English draw up and understand the international standard form of contract to attract foreign funding and investments especially in the context of Vietnam’s deeper integration into the global economy via such comprehensive free trade agreements as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), free trade agreements (FTA), ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) etc and financial support from international organizations such as WB, JICA, ADB etc

Successfully preparing an international standard contract for consulting service is a big problem, especially the one written in foreign language A study of consulting contract agreements in English and Vietnamese will contribute to the study of types of contracts so that they can master and use them effectively in writing, negotiating and signing consulting contracts in English and Vietnamese

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis

This graduation thesis is designed with 5 chapters as follow:

Chapter 1 (Introduction) consists of rationale, the justification of the purposes, the scope and significance of the study on contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 2 (Literature Review) reviews previous studies, theoretical framework and theoretical background which chiefly deals with such topics

as Discourse Structure, two Aspects of Cohesion, Cohesive Devices as well

as the definitions and properties of a contract in general and contract for consulting service in particular

Chapter 3 (Methodology) refers to the research-governing orientations of the study and the method to collect and analyze the collected data to help the author achieve the best results in the study

Chapter 4 (Findings and Discussions) provides analysis and discussion about structure and cohesion features of contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese and then offers students and contract-makers some solutions to the learning and translating contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese based on the findings

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) presents conclusion of the study on the type of

contract for consulting service

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of previous studies

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas

Scholars such as Halliday & Hasan (1976), Brown & Yule (1983) and Cook, (1989) have given a lot of intellect and energy to discourse There have been many authors discussing economic contracts in English Mc Comas, Donna and Satterwhite (1993) and Kench (1972) deal with planning and writing successful business letter and trade contracts Krizan and Harcourt (1999) provide readers with business letter formats in proper structures, phrases and expressions Some websites on business communication concentrate on the formats, languages, structures and guidelines for writing Economic Contracts

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

In Vietnam, a variety of linguists have embarked on pursuing and applying discourse into Vietnamese Tran Ngoc Them (1996), Diep Quang Ban (1998) have given us more overall view of texts and utterances, Nguyen Hoa (2006) has made a great contribution to this field More recently, Ho Ngoc Trung (2013) has given a lot of intellect and energy to discourse

analysis via his course book entitled “Lecture on Discourse Analysis”

In addition, Nguyen Thi Thu (2000) focuses on the description, analysis and comparison of 10 sales contracts in English and Vietnamese, Do Thu Huyen (2000) concentrates on analysis of the business contract structures, Nguyen Thi My Chau (2004) deals with the analysis and comparison of enquiry and reply, offer, order, contract, report, M.O.U, official documents in English and Vietnamese in terms of their lexical and syntactical features

However, most of the books and authors mentioned have not studied the linguistic aspects of contracts for consulting service to denote the general linguistic characteristics affecting consulting contract writing due to the materials provided by the international donor organizations particularly the

WB for use by its borrowers and their implementing agencies are relatively difficult for everyone to search and study

Therefore, the research entitled “A contrastive study on contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese” is conducted with the aim

of contributing a minor part to fulfill the overall picture of this field

2.2 Review of theoretical background

2.2.1 Theoretical framework

Our research focuses on providing a clear investigation into the structure of contract for consulting service and its cohesion The thesis is therefore motivated and conducted within the frameworks theories of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) written by Man and Thomson, and Cohesion proposed by Halliday and Hasan It chiefly deals with such topics as the Concepts of Discourse and Discourse Analysis, Text and Discourse, Spoken and Written Discourse, Discourse Structure, the Concepts of Cohesion, two Aspects of Cohesion, Cohesive Devices and its classification which are relevant to the purpose of this study as well as the definitions and properties

of a contract in general and contract for consulting service in particular

2.2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.2.1 The concepts of Discourse and Discourse analysis

Since the time it was introduced the term “discourse” has taken various, sometimes very broad, meanings Originally the word 'discourse' comes from Latin 'discursus' which denoted 'conversation, speech' Halliday and

Hasan (1976) define that “Discourse is language that is functional - language that is doing some job in some context as opposed to isolated words to sentences Discourse is a unit of language in use It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence Discourse is a semantic unit, a unit not of form but of meaning A discourse does not consist of sentences; it

is realized by, or encoded in sentences”

Nunan (1993) considers discourse as “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences, which are perceived as being related in some way Sentences can be related, not only in terms of ideas they share, but also in terms of the jobs they performed within the discourse-that is in terms of their functions” And according to Halidday & Hasan (1976) discourse is seen as

“a semantic unit, a unit not of form but of meaning A discourse does not consist of sentences; it is realized by, or encoded in sentences”

Discourse analysis is a new branch of linguistics that grew out of work in different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology

Discourse analysis studies language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly institutionalized forms of talk It

examines “how stretches of language, considered in their full textual, social, and psychological context, becoming meaningful and unified for their users”

(Cook 1997: 9)

In Vietnam, discourse analysis is a new subject; it has attracted more and more attention from linguists, who mostly focus on sociological, stylistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatics perspectives

2.2.2.2 Text and discourse

There are, in fact, many concepts around the terms: text and discourse For some linguistics, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably Crystal

(1992:72) defined text as “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed discourse identified for purpose of analysis It is often a language unit with a definable communicative function such as a conversation, a poster” Moreover, some people argue that Discourse is language in action,

while text is the written record of that interaction According to this view, Discourse brings together language, the individual is used; thus it is best characterized as a discourse-as-process view For other linguistics, they tend

to avoid using the term Discourse altogether, they prefer the term Text for all recorded instances of language in use Brown and Yule (1983:6) point out that Text is the representation of Discourse and the verbal record of a communicative act Cook (1989:158), besides, sees Text as “a stretch of language interpreted formally without context” This can be described as a text-as-product view

In this thesis, the term “text” shall be actually used and referred to

“discourse” for a text is unit of language in use and it may be spoken or

written, prose or verse, dialogue

2.2.2.3 Spoken discourse and written discourse

There are two forms of language: spoken and written discourse However, spoken language emerged before written one According to Halliday

(1985:6): “cultural changes which created new communicative needs resulted in the emergence of a new form of language-writing”

Brown and Yule (1983:13) suggest that spoken and written discourse share some common functions The first is to establish and maintain human relationships (interactional use) and the second is to transfer information (transactional use) Also, David Nunan (1995) believes that they both perform an equivalent range of broad functions, that is, it is used to get things done, to provide information and entertain

However, there are some different points between written and spoken discourse The major difference between them is taken from the fact that spoken discourse is changeable and written discourse is permanent Written discourse is often edited and structured while spoken discourse is considered

to be less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by the receivers (Cited in To Viet Thu 2001- MA thesis)

According to Raphael Sakies (1993), the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken language is used For example, in the case of information, written discourse is used to communicate with others who are remote in time and space, for those occasions on which a permanent or semi-permanent record is required

To summarize, spoken and written discourse share some common points in their functions, however, they are different in terms of communicative need, the way of production, and context and these differences are not absolute because the characteristics that we tend to associate with written language can sometimes occur in spoken language and vice versa

However, because our research is only related to written discourse, it therefore investigates features of discourse especially focuses on features of

field of contract discourse -a specific type of discourse and this is hoped to

be able to contribute to the rationale of written discourse community

The new maybe conveyed in English by means of cleft-sentences, some limiting adverbs, the indefinite article, and the construction “there is…” Meanwhile, the given may find its expression in “as far as…”, inversion,

the definite article, or substitution by pronominal elements

[1] * It is the cat which ate the rat

(Given: Something ate the rat

New: The cat did the eating)

[2] *What the cat ate is the rat

(Given: The cat ate something

New: The rat got eaten)

Particularly, Mann and Thompson’s view on discourse structuring is the best known in English The outstanding feature of their Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) shows the types of connection between two pieces of text The relationship is between two pieces of text called the nucleus (N) and the satellite (S) The function – the reason why the speaker/writer chooses to

combine these two pieces of discourse, is called the effect Mann and

Thompson have identified many types of relations Their open-ended list is circumstance, solutionhood, elaboration, relation of cause, antithesis and so

The first sentence is the nucleus, which is strengthened by two pieces of evidence in the S: first you got the result, then the result was judged correct The author’s purpose is using these S clauses to enhance the reader’s belief

in the N clause

Our research aims at analyzing and discussing the structure features of contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese and therefore the major theoretical basis that the study bases itself on is Rhetorical Structure Theory written by Mann and Thompton In which, the two internal relationships, namely N and S are pointed out and such relations as Circumstance, Enablement and Motivation, Evidence and Justify, Relations

of Cause, Purpose, Condition and Otherwise, Interpretation and Evaluation, Restatement and Summary, and lastly Sequence and Contrast within English and Vietnamese contracts are also identified

2.2.2.5 The concepts of cohesion

Basically, cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together It is indicated by grammatical, logical and lexical relationships found among or between the sentences of a text Hence the

concept of cohesion is closely connected with text Cohesion distinguishes texts from nontexts and enables readers and listeners to establish relevance between what was said, is being said, and will be said, through the appropriate use of the necessary lexical and grammatical cohesive devices According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4), cohesion occurs when the semantic interpretation of some linguistic element in the discourse depends

on another They also state that "the concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text, and that defines it as a text"

Cohesion is part of the system of a language The potential for cohesion lies

in the systematic resources of reference, ellipsis and so on, that are built into the language itself Furthermore, cohesion refers to the linguistic features which help make a sequence of sentences a text It occurs in a text through the use of devices that link across sentences According to Cornor (1984), it

is defined as the use of explicit cohesive devices that signals relations among sentences and parts of text Cohesion is concerned with the ways in which the components of text are connected In short, it is a relationship between lexical items and structures which are put together to construct a unified text Cohesion is also one among the seven standards of textuality according to de Beaugrande and Dressler (1983)

2.2.2.6 Two aspects of cohesion

drink with gas makes people excited and unconscious Alcohol, therefore, is the main cause of many traffic accidents Drink driving should be considered as the enemy of drivers If you are offered a drink before driving, try your best to refuse

it otherwise you may get troubles from policemen or from your driving yourself

It is obvious that the above sentences all refer to the same topic, that is the problems of drink – driving

A text may sometimes have subtopics that should be explicitly stated in the topic sentence and hierarchically developed in each paragraph of the text However, all the supporting ideas should maintain constant discussion on only the main topic of the text

This analysis shows that the coherence of the text can be gained in the topical cohesion that can help to distinguish from a jumble of sentences

2.2.2.6.2 Logical cohesion

Logical cohesion is also an important aspect of coherence It facilitates coherent comprehension throughout the connections of all segments in a piece of discourse Some logical sequence relations are chronological order, hierarchical order, cause and effect relation, comparison and contrast relation, order of importance and so on Let us consider the following example:

[6] The high cost of a college education has become a staple of American discourse Pundits disapprove of it; parents gripe about it at neighborhood parties; people plan their careers and finances around the necessity of paying for it A college education, we constantly hear, now costs more than $100,000, and the cost

is rising faster than the inflation rate

The truth is that the $25,000-a-year college is relatively rare, but it exerts a pernicious influence on American culture It creates an atmosphere of panic around college, etc

It can be realized easily that the logical sequence relation here is cause and effect relation as the high cost of college education, so the impact on

American society

In general, what creates links between the clauses and sentences of the text is known as cohesion, the topic and logic of a text can be achieved with the help of topical cohesion and logical cohesion known as two important aspects of cohesion

2.2.2.7 Cohesive Devices and classification

The term “cohesive” has been defined in various ways Some researchers apply the term cohesive to the surface structure of the text “Cohesive” has

sometimes been applied to smaller units of language in the text Other researchers have defined cohesive as continuity in words and sentence structure

Cohesive devices consist of grammatical cohesive devices and lexical cohesive devices We called grammatical because at least one of the elements in the tie is a grammatical word We make a distinction between content or lexical words and grammatical words Lexical words have a

meaning in the dictionary - words like table, chair, go and come;

grammatical words are words which have a function rather than a meaning: a

word like she, for example, has the grammatical function of indicating a

female

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 303), the classification of cohesion

is based on the linguistic form; these are the categories of cohesion that can

be recognized in the lexico-grammatical system Therefore, the type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguistic system or on lexico- grammatical relations

2.2.2.7.1 Grammatical Cohesion

Grammatical cohesion creates surface links of semantic relations between sentences in the text Halliday and Hassan (1976) provide us with the basic categories of grammatical cohesion pointing out that we can systematize this concept by classifying it into a small number of distinct categories: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunctions; these categories have a theoretical basis and specific types of grammatical cohesion, which also provides a practical means for describing and analyzing texts In order to give an overall background of grammatical cohesion, the author attempts to

go into details with each type in the following:

(i) Reference

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are two kinds of reference: exophora and endophora Endophora consists of anaphoric and cataphoric These two types of references are performed through instructing readers to consult back to the former part of the contract ( anaphoric reference) or to the latter part of the contract (cataphoric reference)

[7] Anaphoric reference: The above prices are expressed in US Dollars per metric

ton net CFR port of Vietnam

[8] Cataphoric reference: SELLER undertakes to deliver to BUYER in Vietnam

on CFR basis the following lubricants

In addition to lexical terms, English uses pronouns, demonstratives and comparatives for grammatical reference

 Pronoun may be used in a way that ties them to certain nouns in the text

[9] Consultant will collected all available survey documents include topography, geological, hydrographical and other survey documents had been prepared in FS stage He will also apply survey standards based on the values prescribed in Vietnamese standards for highway survey 22 TCN 263-2000; 22TCN 259-2000 :

“Specification for geological exploration”, and other relative standard

Here, the pronoun refers back to a previously mentioned noun, so “he” refers

to “consultant”

Now, consider another example:

[10] “Nam asked her to dance and so Mai danced”

This time, the pronoun “her” refers forward to the noun “Mai” rather than

back to the noun Nam The tie that points ahead, as in this example, is called cataphoric

 Demonstratives as cohesive ties

Demonstratives are also cohesive ties and either anaphoric or cataphoric Demonstrative reference is expressed through determiners and advebs These items can represent a single word or phrase, or much longer chunks of text

[11] The time schedules have been prepared by observing the logical sequence of activities and related aspects This will allow for timely submission of documents

as required by the ToR

The tie in this example is anaphoric

 Comparatives as cohesive ties

A comparative can also provide a tie to a reference Most comparatives are used for anaphoric reference rather than cataphoric reference Comparative reference is expressed through adjectives and adverbs and serves to compare items within a text in terms of identity or similarity

[12] Would you like these books?

No, as a matter of fact, I’d like the other books

13 Nominal: A: I have two sons and a pretty daughter

B: I have the same (“The same” substitutes for “two sons and a pretty

daughter”)

14 Verbal: A: Have the children fed the dog?

B I think they must have done (“done” substitutes for “fed the dog”)

15 Clausal: A: Is he going to America?

B: I think so (“so” substituted for “going to America”)

(iii) Ellipsis:

Ellipsis can be defined as the omission of certain elements, which have been mentioned in the preceding sentence Ellipsis can be studied in terms of nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis

16 Nominal: His brother is the first person to get married He is the second 

(“Person” is elliptical and “the second” means “the second person”)

17 Verbal: Have you been swimming?

Yes, I have 

What have you been doing?

 Swimming

18 Clausal ellipsis: Can you swim?

Yes  [I can swim](“ I can swim” is omitted)

(iv) Conjunctions

The fourth type of cohesive tie is Conjunction which differs from reference, substitution, and ellipsis in that it is not a device for reminding the reader of previously mentioned entities, actions, and states of affairs In other words, it

is a cohesive device because it signals relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts of the text

In English, four types of conjunctions are recognized: additive, adversative, temporal and causal

19 Additive conjunction: She said she loved him and she wanted to marry him

20 Adversative conjunction: He worked very hard Yet he didn’t pass the exam

21 Causal conjunction: I woke up late Therefore, I was late for school

22 Temporal conjunction: First he forgot his money, then he forgot his key 2.2.2.7.2 Lexical cohesion

Together with grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion plays a very important role in the creation of discourse It is undeniable that the use of vocabulary increases the textuality of discourse Lexical is divided by Halliday M.A.K

& Hasan R (1976) into reiteration and collocation

(i) Reiteration

Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by exploring lexical relations It includes five subtypes, namely repetition, synonymy, antonymy, superordinate or metonymy and general word

23 Party A shall be responsible for the delivery time provided that all materials and accessories to be supplied by party B arrive at Haiphong port in reasonable time prior to starting production of a new style Any factories to be used for production of orders by Party A shall be approved/accepted by Technicians from Steilmann (Repetition)

24 He treats you ill or well (“ill” & “well” are antonyms We can say that “He

treats you ill or not ill” However, “well” makes the sentence more profound) (antonymy)

25 Where did you buy this skirt? You got it at the students’ shop, didn’t you? (In order to avoid repeating the word “buy”, speaker uses “got” to replace) (synonymy)

26 There’s a boy climbing that tree

a The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care

b The lad is going to fall if he doesn’t take care

c The child is going to fall if he doesn’t take care

d The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care

(Halliday & Hasan, 1976:280)

In (a), boy is repeated In (b), the reiteration takes the form of a synonym lad; in (c), of the superordinate term child, and in (d), of a general word idiot It is typical of such general words, at least those referring to people as

we have seen, that they carry a connotation of attitude on the part of the speaker, usually one of familiarity

(ii) Collocation

Collocation is the second type of lexical cohesion and deals with the relationship between words on the basis of the fact that these often occur in the same surroundings Or in other words, collocation is known as the tendency of some words to co-occur together without depending on any semantic relationships For example, a text dealing with the chemical treatment of food contains lexical chain such as: fruit, skin, citrus, lemon, orange, chemicals, products, laboratory etc These words can be said to

belong to the same register and contribute to the same topic

The above section is just brief review of the two types of cohesion: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion classified by Halliday & Hasan (1976) However, within the limited scope of this thesis, the study could only focus on devices of Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunctions (three types

of grammatical cohesive devices) and given the frequency of appearance of lexical Reiteration only three categories of Repetition, Synonymy and Antonym are investigated

2.2.2.8 Definition of Contract and its properties

2.2.2.8.1 Definition of Contract

Carven (2013) defined contract as “An agreement made between two or more parties which create legal rights and obligations” and Consulting contract can be defined by Shannon Belew (2008) as “a binding, legal document or contract between the consultant and his or her client It should be executed, or signed, prior

to work starting The contract typically reviews the terms by which the client agrees

to work with the consultant, including such things as stating the scope of work; payment terms (rate/fee and when and how to pay); and identifying the parties for legal purposes.”

2.2.2.8.2 Properties of contract for consulting service in English and Vietnamese

(i) Modality

Only skimming over an English contract for consulting service in a minute

can you recognize the repeated appearance of modal verbs like will, shall, must, may This can be explained that they represent linguistic means to state

“what one has to do” and “What one is entitled to do”, or legally speaking,

to set up prohibitory and optional norms

May which means “permission” is used to build optional norm

27 In competing for or in executing the Contract, then the Client may, after giving 14 days notice to the Consultant, terminate the Consultant's employment under the Contract, and the provisions of Clause 2 shall apply as if such expulsion had been made under Sub-Clause 2.9.1(d)

28 A Party may change its address for notice hereunder by giving the other Party notice in writing of such change to the address specified in the SC [32]

According to Cao Xuan Hao, modals in Vietnamese are: có, có thể, phải, muốn, định, toan, suýt, bắt đầu, đang, đã, sẽ, không, chưa, cũng, vẫn, thôi

In Vietnamese consulting contract discourse, modals are also realized:

For “Prohibition” norm, modal “không” is used:

For “Permission” norm, “có thể” is used:

For “Obligation” is expressed by “phải”:

In addition, modal combinations conveying prohibitory meaning such as “có trách nhiệm”, permissive meaning as ‘có quyền” are repeatedly used in

Vietnamese consulting agreements

(ii) Airtightness and Accuracy

To decide whether a discourse is airtight or not depends on its content and

formality Airtightness and Accuracy in an English consulting contract are

first realized by the use of terms whose meaning is clear and accurate as they are mono-semantic words This, therefore, helps strengthen the airtightness of a consultancy contract Additionally, it is these terms that build the technicality - a particular feature of a consultant contract in English

29 Bank” means the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., or the International Development Association, Washington, D.C., U.S.A

30 Member” means any of the entities that make up the joint venture/consortium/association; and “Members” means all these entities

“Bank” and “Member” are both terms collected from the two different

consulting contracts They, besides, are technical/operational words placed

in the very first articles “Definitions and Interpretations” of consulting

contracts

(iii) Inclusiveness

Binominal and multi-nominal phrases like “signed and sealed”, “works and services” “then or thereafter”, “directly or indirectly”, “out of or in connection with ", “to the work and/or to the site ", “in connection with or in consequence and

so on are useful linguistic means to express the Inclusiveness that can be applied to all cases and circumstances

Nominalization is another grammatical device which helps forming

Inclusiveness for consultancy contracts in English According to our survey,

nominalization is used quite often in English contracts

31 The Client may terminate this Contract in case of the occurrence of any of the events specified in paragraphs (a) through (g) of this Clause GC 2.9.1 In such

an occurrence the Client shall give a not less than thirty (30) days’ written notice

of termination to the Consultants, and sixty (60) days’ in case of the event referred

to in (g) (Terminate (v) —> Termination (n) (nominalization))

Nominalization is also seen quite often in Vietnamese consultancy contract discourse

32 Trong trường hợp xảy ra bất khả kháng, các bên sẽ gia hạn thời gian thực hiện hợp đồng tương ứng bằng thời gian diễn ra sự kiện bất khả kháng mà bên bị ảnh hưởng không thể thực hiện nghĩa vụ theo hợp đồng của mình Việc gia hạn thời gian thực hiện hợp đồng không được phép làm tăng giá hợp đồng nếu việc

chậm trễ do lỗi của nhà thầu

In this example, verb “gia hạn” is combined with grammatical elements as

“việc/ công việc”, it is one of the ways to nominalize from Dinh Van Duc

The nominalization of these verbs makes this article more airtight and inclusive

(iv) Performativity

What makes an English and Vietnamese consultancy contract text performative may arise from the fact that the two signatories meet, negotiate, agree upon articles, and mutually cause the agreement to be executed Linguistically speaking, one of the most indispensable means to

help realize Performativity of consulting contract text in English and

Vietnamese is performative verbs which are understood as a linguistic device that makes an illocutionary act explicit

In English consulting contract texts, such verbs as agree, acknowledge, warrant, procure, ensure, are called performative verbs

33 NOW THEREFORE the parties hereto hereby agree as follows (PL4-06B):

“Agree” in this example is really a performative verb that belongs to

Commissives since when this sentence is read/heard, the reader or listener

can understand the act of agreement “Agree”, in this case, makes “the act

of agreement” explicit.

In Vietnamese consultancy contract texts have also performative verbs

34 Các bên cam kết thực hiện một cách trung thực, công bằng và đảm bảo để thực hiện theo mục tiêu của Hợp đồng (PL4-16)

“Cam kết” here is also a commissive It expresses what the two sides intend,

that is commissive

2.3 Summary

This chapter deals with such topics as Written Discourse, the Context of Situation, the Topic Framework, Cohesion and Coherence, the Co-operative principle which are relevant to the purpose of this study as well as the definitions and properties of a contract in general and contract for consulting service in particular

The following part shall provide a detailed rationale for the research method, including a discussion of why the selected method was chosen instead of another

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research-governing orientations

3.1.1 Research questions

The following research questions are addressed:

1 What are the features of contracts for consulting services in terms of structure and cohesion in English and Vietnamese?

2 What are the similarities and differences between contracts for consulting services in terms of structure and cohesion in English and Vietnamese?

3 What are the implications of the research?

3.1.2 Research setting

Vietnam has made steady progress on transparency in the last 10 years and it

is emphasizing the importance of medium-sized cities Reflecting the important role that medium sized cities can play in Vietnam’s development and urbanization process, the Government has requested support from the

WB for infrastructure development and, of equal importance, capacity building, in three medium sized cities: Lao Cai, Phu Ly and Vinh (under Medium Cities Development Project in Vietnam)

The objective of the WB has always been the reduction of poverty in its client countries The procurement procedure will be carried out by the member countries that are implementing the projects but the Bank will have the role of closely supervising the process to ensure that the procurement goals are achieved

Procurement terms have not been learned and taught in English as a subject

at university Meanwhile procurement activity gradually becomes popular because our country has been attracting foreign investors, international organizations providing loans and technical assistance to Viet Nam such as JICA, WB and ADB The graduates as well as translators, therefore, certainly face difficulties in translating and interpreting process due to not only the variety of Vietnamese and English words, the differences of using specific English words but also the more and more appearance of new terms

in human activities, especially terms related to such as procurement, construction, finance, contractual agreements etc and problems in understanding these documents structurally and linguistically

3.1.3 Research approaches

Our research aims at analyzing and discussing the structure and cohesion features of contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese To find out the answer to the above-mentioned questions, the following approaches are utilized:

(i) The thesis is motivated and conducted within the frameworks of the theories written by Man and Thomson and the foundation of Haliday and Hasan's cohesive devices

(ii) Next, in order to achieve the set goal, the study will be carried out by the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches The reasons for this combination lie in the procedures of the study First of all, statistic tools, then table and chart demonstrations are used to find out which cohesive devices are the most commonly-used in these certain business texts, the quantitative method is employed through systemizing the frequency of the occurrence of each device In addition, some complementary methods used in this study are our

translating experience and personal observation

3.1.4 Principles for data collection and data analysis

To obtain reliable results, it is presumed that the research should be based on

a fair amount of description, presenting contracts as they are I presumed that about 10 respective contracts for consulting services in English and Vietnamese would be sufficient data These chosen contracts are the main materials for procuring to hire the services of qualified and experienced consultants for MCDP project Each contract for consulting service contains three components:

1 Name of contract and the beginning

2 The body of contract

3 The ending of contract

These sample texts are mostly taken from MCDP project and are random chosen to be examined The following table presents the origin of sample texts

Table 3.1: List of sample texts and their origin

In English

Consulting Contract for detailed

design service number PL4-02

MCDP project- Phu Ly city subproject

Consulting Contract for

construction supervision service

service number PL4-08A subproject

Consulting Contract for technical

assistance service number PL4-01

MCDP project - Phu Ly city subproject

Consulting Contract for

monitoring on environmental and

social safeguard number LC4-05

MCDP project - Lao Cai city subproject

In Vietnamese

Hợp đồng dịch vụ tư vấn thiết kế

chi tiết số VH-04: nâng cấp cải

tạo kênh Bắc giai đoạn 1

MCDP project - Vinh city subproject

Hợp đồng dịch vụ tư vấn giám sát

thi công xây dựng công trình: Tư

vấn giám sát thực hiện gói thầu số

02,03 thuộc dự án xây dựng HTKT

khu TĐC phục vụ GPMB dự án

đường 68m, đường150m (đường

Lê Công Thanh giai đoạn II)

Technical infrastructure construction project-Phu Ly city

3.2.1 Major methods and supporting methods

Descriptive method is mainly used in this study as it helps to investigate into

the frequency of the occurrence of some linguistic cohesive devices among business texts The purpose of this type of this research as it is introduced by

Rog (1998) is “to be the best methods for collecting information that will demonstrate relationships and describe the things as it exists”

Besides, quality-oriented bilateral contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese contracts for consulting services is the principal way for identifying the similarities and differences in structure as well as the devices

of cohesion in the two languages

Quantitative and qualitative methods are both also used in this paper with priorities given to the quantitative In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are based on the analysis of contracts for consulting services

in English and Vietnamese In addition, as mentioned above, such methods

as descriptive, analytic, comparative and contrastive are also utilized to describe and analyze, to compare and contrast the database so as to bring out similarities and differences in process of producing contracts for consulting services by English and Vietnamese people

3.2.2 Data collection techniques

To guarantee the validity and reliability of the research results, it is of great importance to us that the following procedures are conducted:

Step 1: The information of the contract structures for consulting service in English and Vietnamese is collected, and then our personal observation is considered for checking the results and making useful comparison

Step 2: Next, each type of cohesive devices is taken into consideration; in particular, the author studies the materials and searches for every cohesive device in all texts, calculates them then averages them out and sums up