DISCOURSE FEATURES OF AFRICAN CHARTER ON THE RIGHTS AND WELFARE OF THE CHILD

Tatyana Shoustikova¹, Yana Chernysh²*, Natalia Melkonyan^3
1Prof. Dr., Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia - RUDN University (RUSSIA)
²Ms. Yana Chernysh, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia - RUDN University (RUSSIA) lf.law9@gmail.com

³Ms. Natalia Melkonyan, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia - RUDN University (RUSSIA)
*Corresponding Author

Abstract

The paper explores the African Charter on the rights and welfare of the child as a cognitive conceptual phenomenon represented trough verbal language that reflects community’s social action within the specified multidimensional framework.

The study goal is to conduct multidimensional conceptual study through the language analysis of the mentioned text.  The paper consider a number of background publications with regard to the text under study, explores textual, thematic and language use  features with regard to this text,  Investigates its conceptual structure  and introduces the results of the survey of specialists who engage in international documents interpretation and drafting.

The research materials combine academic literature on the subject, the text of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the focus group member structured replies as the background material for practical study.

The research methods derived from the qualitative approach, combined theoretical analysis of relevant literature and empirical activities. The methods of inducive, descriptive, content- and frame-based types of analysis were applied.

The research sample integrated lawyers and language editors who deal with international and reginal law drafting and interpretation.
The research findings revealed disbalance in the conceptual structure of the document under study, lack of consistent development of theme-rheme relations in the piece of discourse under consideration. The results also confirmed the validity of the research methodology that has been designed earlier by the research team to which the authors are part to. The data can be used for further theoretical analysis of different legal discourse genres, for applied training of those who deal with legislation drafting and interpretation.

Keywords: language, discourse studies, language rights.