Footing in Courtroom Discourse: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis of Opening Statements in George Floyd's Murder Trial
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1606.20Keywords:
courtroom discourse, footing, George Floyd, opening statements, speaker's rolesAbstract
Drawing on Erving Goffman’s (1979, 1981) interaction model of footing, which distinguishes between the different speaker's roles of animator, author, and principal, this study explores how shifts in speaker alignment serve as linguistic and ideological strategies that frame competing communicative acts in courtroom discourse. This paper provides a forensic linguistic analysis of opening statements presented in George Floyd's murder trial (2021). The study's main objectives are to demonstrate how courtroom discourse is not only a site of legal argumentation but also of ideological performance, to identify the various speakers' roles in the opening statements of Floyd's murder trial, and to show how these participation roles are manifested linguistically in discourse. The study uses a qualitative forensic discourse analysis approach to discuss how the different speakers' roles are linguistically represented in the opening statements of the trial at hand. Findings reveal that the lawyers adopt particular participation roles during their opening statements, including the roles of animator, author, and principal. These participation roles are linguistically realized by various strategies, including the use of speech acts, modality, agency, emotive language, nominalization, attitude markers, lexical choices, active and passive voice, and evaluative language. Theoretically, the study contributes to forensic linguistics by demonstrating the analytical efficacy of Goffman’s participation framework in uncovering the pragmatic and ideological dimensions of courtroom discourse.
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