“I'm Really Having Trouble with That Word ‘To Know’”: The Multimodal Construction of Knowledge in an Actual Jury Deliberation

This is the first study of a real jury deliberation using a multimodal poetic framework that examines how a juror builds a persuasive and authoritative narrative to construct the defendant's knowledge and perception of reality. What does it mean “to know” and how does he “know” it? I analyze how knowledge is framed and channeled in one direction rather than another through multimodal poetics and epistemic stance. More explicitly, does the defendant actually know he is a felon in possession of a gun—a serious felony—or does his knowledge exist along a much more problematic space? Rather than employ orthodox data collection methods like mock juries, post-trial interviews, and exogenous input/outcome variables (or sociodemographic variables), I investigate jury deliberation naturalistically in the “wild,” as it were, in and through the polyrhythmic details of multimodal conduct.