Closing Argument as Multimodal Oratory: Insights from the Chauvin Trial

Abstract

The paper examines selected aspects of the defence closing argument in a highly publicised criminal trial to illustrate the orchestration of various semiotic resources in legal persuasion and to explain their role in the creation of meaning. The study demonstrates that closing arguments are multimodal performances whose persuasiveness results from the combination of modes (speech, image, video, gaze, gesture, posture, proxemics) which contextualise and strengthen one another, rather than language alone. Drawing on earlier research into multimodality, courtroom rhetoric and proximity in disciplinary genres, the analysis centres on the ways in which the defence counsel controls the rhetorical features of his narrative and constructs himself and the audience as people with similar understandings and goals.