Domestic Abuse in the Courtroom: A Corpus-Aided Discourse Analysis of the Construction of Victimhood at Trial

Almost 10% (9.9) of adults living in England and Wales were estimated to have experienced domestic abuse (hereafter DA) in the year ending March 2022 (ONS 2022). Despite the prominence of this social issue, there is limited research on its linguistic representation in a trial setting. This project therefore integrates elements of forensic linguistics, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to explore the linguistic representation of DA in the courtroom, using the Depp v. Heard (2019) defamation trial as a case study. Though the legal issues of this trial concerned the veracity of Amber Heard's statements in an op-ed, the case hinged on whether or not abuse occurred and, as the trial unfolded, who was the victim: Depp or Heard. The centrality of DA stories to the case make it an appropriate data source for addressing this project's research aims; these have a particular focus on how witnesses alleging DA linguistically navigate victimhood in court, and how this process is both facilitated and prohibited by their trial lawyers.
Within the context of rape in the courtroom, there is a wealth of literature evidencing the challenges victims of gender-based violence face in proving their accounts. Cross-examiners have been shown to use linguistic devices, such as reformulations and controlling question-types, to dominate the interactional space in rape trials and distort complainants' testimonies (Drew 1992; Ehrlich 2001). These devices transform the crime narrative into one that blames the victim for their actions leading up to rape, and suggests they actually wanted the intercourse to happen (Taslitz 1999; Matoesian 2001; Ehrlich 2010). Research on DA newspaper representation (e.g. Lindsay-Brisbin et al. 2014) suggests this form of victim stereotyping is also prevalent in media discourse; themes such as victim blaming, attacking the victim's character in depicting them as promiscuous, and excusing the perpetrator by portraying them as having uncontrollable rage, have all been shown to be perpetuated in newspapers in the UK and US (Taylor 2009; Braber 2014; Lloyd and Ramon 2017). Since the media hold great power in shaping public opinion on social issues (Tuchman 1978; Higgins 2010), and jurors in DA trials are representative of the public, this research will explore the extent to which these themes permeate into courtroom discourse.
This project will take a corpus-driven, exploratory approach, relying on the patterns that emerge from the data to guide the direction of the analysis (Tognini-Bonelli 2001). To facilitate this, a small, specialised corpus will be created of the direct and cross-examinations of Depp and Heard; these total around 50 hours' worth of data from CourtTV's (2023) broadcasting of the trial. Corpus tools of collocation, frequency lists and concordances have all been effectively used in the analysis of legal discourse (Heffer 2005; Potts and Weare 2018; Potts and Formato 2021); this project will therefore utilise these tools to undertake lexical analysis of the corpus, examining how DA and its themes around victimhood are discursively constructed in the courtroom. The study will also utilise Conversation Analysis alongside corpus methods, a synergy pioneered by O'Keefe and Walsh (2012), to examine extracts of those courtroom transcripts in a qualitative, close-up capacity; this will enable the quantitative corpus findings to be explored further in their interactional context.
This study will provide insights into what institutional (linguistic) constraints complainants may face in discursively constructing stories of abuse. The implications of gaining this understanding are significant; through identifying these constraints, this research will not only raise awareness, but could also indicate directions for legal reform that would give DA victims the best chance at attaining justice in the legal system.