Unwrapping the Black Box: Critical Discourse Analysis and Doublespeak in Administrative Rulemaking

Background: The changing nature of the economy has disadvantaged individuals at the lower end of the economic ladder, best evidenced by changes in the structure of work and modifications in the social safety net. The visibility of these conditions increased substantially over the last year. While the focus of social work research often turns to promoting and analyzing programs created to resolve such inequalities, regulatory policy shapes the structure of opportunities that allow individuals to succeed. To answer the critical question, “who benefits?”, we examine administrative rules related to employment policy made by the Trump administration and published in the federal register during its first two years.

Methods: We conducted a systematic search of the federal register from January 20 2017, through December 31, 2018 using 19 search terms including workforce development, investment, and jobs. We reviewed the 154 rules and excluded duplicates, rules that were not final, and rules not related to jobs or workers. We used critical discourse analysis to assess how the remaining 56 rule changes justify and legitimatize exclusion and exploitation, coding for primary discourse and political tools. Initially, both authors coded the same rules separately and discussed differences until establishing consensus on code definitions. During the analysis we met to streamline codes. As our initial reading found evidence of doublespeak, i.e., reframing something potential harmful as helpful, we intentionally examined rules for patters of doublespeak that emerged. After initial coding we refined codes for cohesiveness.

Findings. We found primary discourse reflected a broad range of changes potentially counter to worker interests, from rescinding fair pay and safe workplace rules to reducing program administration regulations. Rules potentially supportive of workers included increasing H–2B nonimmigrant visas and expanding eligibility to pension benefit guaranty programs. The politics tool reflected rationales related to promoting business interests, especially growth and profits, and reducing government. Worker interests ranked third. Several types of doublespeak emerged where changes framed as positive even when benefits accrued only to businesses. For example, balancing costs and benefits was used to justify deregulation. One rule stated, “We are no longer persuaded, though, that the 2015 rule would improve protection of ground water to the extent that would justify the burdens on operators or on the BLM.” While reducing cost is universally appealing, it is not possible to evaluate this decision without a clearer discussion of the economic and non-economic burden of recension.

Implications. We found that rationales for policy change cite business interests and shrinking government substantially more frequently than worker interests. Furthermore, numerous instances of doublespeak obfuscate the intention of some rule changes. Research on administrative processes such as this begin to open the black box that contains part of this nation’s embedded institutional discrimination. Future work to engage more social change advocates in monitoring administrative rule-making processes, particularly given the extent to which federal rule-making considers and responds to comments from stakeholders, could help to further unpack this black box. Documentation of patterns of doublespeak can help social workers in all fields dispel disinformation.