Representing Reality in Court: Power and Persuasion in Trial Discourse, as exemplified in The People v. Orenthal James Simpson
Authors: Cotterill Janet 
Published: January 2008

Representing Reality in Court explores the language of the US adversarial
trial process as exemplified in the infamous case of Orenthal James (OJ)
Simpson. In 1995, Simpson, the all-American football hero turned actor
and celebrity, was charged with the double homicide of his ex-wife and a
male friend. The resulting trial lasted nine months, involved 126 witnesses
and cost Los Angeles County an estimated $9 million. This thesis examines
the trial as the site of linguistic power and persuasion, focusing on the role
played by linguistic and discursive choices in (re)presenting and (re)constructing
the acts and actors involved in the crime and its investigation.
The data analysed represent a uniquely complete resource, drawing on the
extended legal process from Simpson’s post-arrest interview through to
the 6.2 million word trial itself and beyond. The insights gained from this
analysis are supplemented by media reports of the trial as well as post-trial
interviews with jurors and books written by them. The result is a multidimensional
and multiperspectival view of the discourse of the ‘Trial of the
Century’.

The thesis moves through the criminal trial process, beginning with a
consideration of the linguistic consequences of the adversarial system,
which is based upon the adjudication of conflicting and competing versions
of events presented by prosecution and defence. The adversarial
approach prioritises argumentation and persuasion, with its primary
objective a dialectic and dialogic appraisal of the evidence. In this context,
the linguistic means by which the evidence is elicited and presented is of
crucial importance.

The thesis is structured around the notion of the trial as a process of
storytelling. I analyse the effects of the constraints imposed by the law and
the legal process on witnesses’ freedom to ‘tell their own story’ in court,
and explore the manipulation of time, space and perspective in the transition
from the ‘real world’ (real time) events of the crime to the setting of
the courtroom. The concept of ‘audience’ is also central to the thesis. I
analyse the types of talk which occur in the trial-by-jury process, exemplified
in the OJ Simpson trial, and discuss the ways in which the hierarchy
of the courtroom influences talk by its participants. I explore the complexities
of audience types in the Simpson trial (involving both internal
and external viewers and voyeurs) and their influence on the kinds of talk
produced in court. Finally, I examine how the presence of the jury – the
trial’s ‘silent participant’ – influences the discourse of the judge, lawyers
and witnesses in the case.

Next I examine the negotiation of power, knowledge and status
between the expert witness and the lawyer. The lawyer questioning the
expert is faced with a communicative dilemma: she/he must simultaneously
establish and maintain the expert status of the witness, thereby
validating their evidence and creating credibility, but this demand must be
reconciled with the conflicting need to communicate with a lay jury, whose
understanding of the issues and their concomitant terminology may be
limited or even non-existent. In addition, the lawyer must balance establishing
the credibility of the witness with their own professional status in
the courtroom. This section analyses the layering of power and expertise
in the Simpson courtroom and its delicate negotiation by means of
complex discursive strategies.

Framing the dialogic elicitation of testimony during witness
(cross)examination are the monologic opening and closing statements.
The thesis goes on to consider the lexical representation of the acts and
actors involved in the crime story and the role of strategic lexical choices
in constructing the prosecution and defence narrative frameworks. In an
analysis of the opening statements, I consider the lexicalization of Simpson
as a spouse abuser and the conflicting semantic prosodies and connotations
conveyed by the prosecution and defence representations of both
Simpson and his ex-wife. By studying the patterns of co-occurrence and
connotation of these particular lexical items in common usage in the
COBUILD Bank of English, I elucidate the ways in which lawyers in the
Simpson case attempted to map out for the jury a persuasive semantic
environment within which to consider the ‘mountain of evidence’ from
both sides. In addition I explore attempts to present a persuasive summary
of the evidence during the closing arguments. Taking a further lexically
oriented strategy – the use of metaphor – as its focus, this section of the
thesis ends with a discussion of the systematic network of metaphorical
references used by both prosecution and defence in the closing arguments,
in their attempts to conceptualize and reconceptualize Simpson (as a time
bomb) and the trial process itself (as the completion of a jigsaw puzzle).

The thesis, like the trial, concludes with the deliberation process and
verdict. Although Californian law prohibits direct access to the jury’s
deliberations, in this case researchers do have access to the jurors’ posttrial
thoughts and reflections. The interviews, journals and books
produced by jurors about their experiences during the trial and during
deliberation provide a fascinating ‘insider’ perspective on the Simpson
trial process. In addition to analysing the jurors’ self-observations, this
final section also includes the contributions of lawyers, psychologists and
linguists, all of whom have attempted to explain the sensational not-guilty
verdict. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of some of the implications of
the Simpson trial, and its verdict, for the criminal trial-by-jury system, and
what The People vs Orenthal James Simpson can teach us about the language
of the courtroom.