One Trial, Two stories: Discourse, Identity, and Persuasion in Competing Courtroom Narratives

Social scientists have long been interested in understanding how jurors make verdict decisions at trial, and research in the field of psychology has demonstrated the centrality of stories in this decision-making process (Griffin, 2013). Within linguistics, the study of narrative discourse has provided significant insights into how stories are told and how their telling enables the accomplishment of a variety of social goals (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2015; Gordon, 2013). In this research, I work toward an understanding of how attorneys construct two persuasive opposing narratives through their discursive identity construction of defendants and victims in the opening statements of criminal trials, utilizing frameworks from narrative analysis (Labov, 1972; Davies & Harre, 1990; Bamberg, 1997). To do so, I analyze the opening statement narratives of three criminal trials (MN v. Chauvin, FL v. Lewis, and WI v. Rittenhouse) and identify how attorneys position defendants and victims within those narratives to construct identities which can then be evaluated against legal standards to support the ultimate conclusion of these narratives: the defendant is guilty or not guilty. This work provides an explanation of one way in which courtroom narratives are linguistically constructed to be more persuasive. Additionally, this research has applications for the professional field of trial consulting and offers one example of how linguists or linguistics students can pursue professional careers at the intersection of language and law.