Abstract:
The heart of every’ construction project is a contract, which plays a dominant role in preventing
and resolving disputes by providing comprehensive coverage of all the items of work, duties and
responsibilities of the contracting parties, and conflict resolution mechanisms related to all
contingencies. By developing an acceptable level of communication among parties through
standard and particular contract clauses, a smooth functioning of a construction project without
contractual disputes can be achieved. Textual complexity’ can be described as the difficulty of a
text to read and understand it by the users. Readability is text-centred; while understandability
measures text-reader interaction and is a broader concept. Readability thus measures the textual
difficulty’ of a passage; while understandability measures the ability of a reader to gain knowledge
from a text, and is contingent not only on syntactical difficulty, but also on reader characteristics
such as the reader's background, prior knowledge, interest, and general reading ability. The
readability together with understandability’ will offer a better measurement on the level of textual
complexity.
The author identifies that the textual complexity of contract clauses in terms of readability and
understandability has a relationship with the frequency of referring to them in contractual
disputes. When the readability and understandability of contract clauses are low, the frequency oj
those clauses being referred to in contractual disputes increases. Further, the study revealed that
even though the particular conditions are prepared with the intention of making the contract
clauses easier, the readability of them become more low and complex at its alteration.
