Constructing adversarial realities in and about the Chauvin trial

This chapter explores the data driven approach, which uses AntConc and LFM to discover lexical patterns in the opening and closing statements in the MvC corpus. This study uses a combination of a bottom-up and top-down approach, examining the data's grammatical and lexical patterns and the similarities and differences between the prosecution and defence opening statements and closing arguments, as well as seeking answers to research questions.

In this chapter research question one is the focus: What do the lexical and grammatical patterns in the opening statements and closing arguments indicate about the texts' 'aboutness'. This gives scope for insights into how lawyer talk is used in the MvC corpus to begin formulating the specific research questions. The corpus-driven approach allows the data to speak for itself, looking broadly at the patterns produced, rather than focusing on specific language use.

AntConc is particularly helpful here, as its purpose is to find frequency patterns and word sequences within a corpus.

The patterns uncovered using the computational tools provide a way into the corpus, to explore ideas that are key in the trial. Mike Scott (2017) relates keyness to the concept of' 'aboutness', by thinking about what constitutes a main point in a text. Most texts relate to a clear field of knowledge or a topic.

To find the main point of a text, it is important to identify repeated words and then key words (Scott, 2017). With this in mind, we expect the corpus's 'aboutness' to reveal key ideas in the corpus. The aim of this chapter is to outline what the MvC corpus demonstrates about its 'aboutness', to identify the focus of the prosecution and defence opening statements and then closing arguments.

The 'aboutness' of the opposing crime narratives delivered in the opening statements gives an indication of each barrister's narrative focus, to explore how this influences the positioning of the key social actors and the jury and is compared with the 'aboutness' of the closing arguments.