‘Bible babble’: naming the interactional trouble at Waco  

Oleh:

Tracy, Karen (Co-Author); Agne, Robert R.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Discourse Studies (Full Text) vol. 3 no. 3 (Aug. 2001), page 269-394.
Topik: Bible-talk; Branch Davidians; crisis negotiation; discourse; identity work; interactional framing; problem naming; Waco
Fulltext: 269DES33.pdf (217.89KB)

Isi artikel

Outside Waco, Texas, on 19 April 1993, a 51-day standoff between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and David Koresh and the Branch Davidians concluded with a devastating fire. Despite the fact that FBI negotiators talked on the telephone with Koresh or his main spokesman almost every day, the negotiators were unable to bring the standoff to a peaceful end. A frustrating yet persistent aspect for the FBI negotiators was the Davidians’ talk about the Bible and their religious beliefs, what agents dismissively described as ‘Bible babble’. In this study, we analyze several exchanges between Koresh and one of the FBI agents. The analysis shows how the FBI’s identifying their problem as ‘Bible babble’ contributed to the negotiation failure. Through their talk, Koresh was positioned as a biblical expert and the FBI agent as a novice. The FBI’s talk also supported Koresh’s face (not challenging the reasonableness of his beliefs). These two conversational patterns, we argue, legitimated God as a key party and Koresh as the person who could best speak for him. In the conclusion, we suggest how a renaming of the problem might have reshaped the FBI’s moves.

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