Authoritative Sensemaking in a Public Inquiry Report
分析了关于Piper Alpha灾难的Cullen报告，研究公共调查团队如何通过叙事技巧和逼真性策略使其意义建构显得权威，并揭示这种话语如何去政治化灾难、合法化社会制度。
This article analyses the Cullen Report into the Piper Alpha disaster in order to research how public inquiry teams represent their efforts to make sense of events as authoritative. It is argued that inquiry reports are highly convention-governed sensemaking narratives that employ various forms of verisimilitude in order to bolster their authority. They are also monological storytelling performances that function hegemonically to impose a particular version of reality on their readers. The investigation of the means by which inquiry reports accomplish verisimilitude and hegemony are important as they may shed light on how this form of public discourse depoliticizes disaster events, legitimates social institutions, and lessens anxieties by concocting myths that emphasize our omnipotence and capacity to control.