A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Intellectual Property Chapter of the TPP: Confirming What the Critics Fear
Year: 2017

A host of organizations and citizens groups have convincingly pointed out that so called "Free Trade Agreements" have done more harm than good to the U.S. and other countries involved. Thanks to their protests, for the moment, the most ambitious multinational, neoliberal project of our young century, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been defeated. If the agreement had been adopted, the TPP would have shaped new rules of trade for over 8 million people, spanning 40% of the global economy. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) my study shows how the complex language of the actual treaty compared to its more simplistic and optimistic summary on the US Trade Representative website reveals the TPP to be a corporate power grab, depriving nation states, public institutions and individual citizens of their democratic rights. Due to its central importance in a number of realms (entertainment copyrights, pharmaceuticals, the internet) my analysis focuses on the Intellectual Property (IP) chapter of the TPP. As labor leaders, environmentalists, internet defenders, concerned physicians, and others have pointed out, the IP chapter essentially would have essentially enforced a ratcheted up version of US intellectual property law across member nations. Given the TPP's raw financial motivation and the unequal economic status of signatory nations, an analysis of the IP chapter requires a methodology which centers on uncovering ideologies, power imbalances, gender inequalities and the like. CDA works well for this purpose as it aims to expose socially constructed inequality by uncovering how public discourses such as laws and treaties relate to power structures and actually construct power itself. Using CDA, I will show how rhetorical devices such as implied audience, genre and style, as well as socioeconomic, and historical/contextual representations hide power imbalances and erase subjectivities. CDA also welcomes quantitative measures such as computer assisted linguistic and content analyses which add empirical weight to the conclusions of my investigation. When examining corpora such as the TPP full of legal jargon and qualifying hedges, computer assisted content analysis offers a manageable way to characterize large or difficult bodies of textual data and often allows for broader and more valid interpretations. Content analysis is also useful for revealing non obvious, but meaningful patterns of language use. Thus through word counts, frequency tabulations, and collocations, I will show how multinational neoliberalism manifests itself in the full TPP Intellectual Property chapter which supports the construction of a world in the US neoliberal image. The chapter summary, on the other hand, emphasizes the promotion of economic democracy and the collective good. This rhetorical duplicity will be situated conceptually, in my essay which draws on the work of Norman Fairclough, Teun Van Dijk, David Harvey, Ruth Wodak, and others, to show how the TPP reflects and contributes to the discourse which naturalizes US corporate hegemony and exploitation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Intellectual Property Chapter of the TPP: Confirming What the Critics Feared A host of organizations and citizens groups have convincingly pointed out that so called "Free Trade Agreements" have done more harm than good to the U.S. and other countries involved. Thanks to their protests, for the moment, the most ambitious multinational, neoliberal project of our young century, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been defeated. Activists, scientists, environmentalists, labor unions, concerned citizens and others opposed the treaty and created a tide of opposition which ultimately led the two 2016 presidential candidates to call for its elimination. Had it passed, the TPP would have gone far beyond existing "free trade agreements" such as NAFTA and granted ever more power to multinational corporations while depriving nation states, public institutions and individual citizens of their rights. Written in secrecy over seven years largely by corporate representatives, if it had been adopted, the TPP would have paved the way for further neoliberal, globalized trading that would have affected over 800 million people and 40% of the world economy. Before the TPP's downfall, 487 lobbying and business organizations spent millions to support the TPP in Congress by arguing that the TPP would bring increased commerce and trade to the US. 2 In its zeal to promote the TPP, and perhaps in a move toward transparency after years of working in secret, the Obama administration's US Trade Representative posted the actual treaty online in November 2015. Because of its obtuse and esoteric language, few lay Americans could decipher the actual TPP text. Summary chapters of the treaty were also posted and written with far less legal terminology and with a different rhetorical purpose to try and convince the average citizen that the TPP was beneficial. In this age of "fake news," polarized opinion, misleading statements and outright falsehoods, it has become difficult to discern where the truth lies; nevertheless, a barrage of careful evidence revealing the treaty's harmful effects chipped away at its support and prompted ever more individual citizens and citizens' groups to voice their opposition. Thankfully, although since being elected, President Donald Trump has so far declined to reintroduce the TPP; however, he has indicated a desire to renegotiate the NAFTA treaty to include many of the worst provisions in the TPP. My examination of the TPP using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) will illustrate that these so called "free trade agreements" contribute to a discursive 1 "What Is the Trans Pacific Partnership?" BBC News, January 23, 2017, sec. Business, http:/www.bbc.com/news/business 32498715. 2 Will Tucker, "Millions Spent by 487 Organizations to Influence TPP Outcome," Truthout, October 8, 2015, http:/www.truth out.org/speakout/item/33170 millions spentby 487 organizations to influence tpp outcome. Hollis A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty communication+1 Vol. 6 [2017] Iss. 1, Article 5 1 environment that relies on and helps a neoliberal worldview and economy, thereby turning citizens into unwitting participants in a corporate driven market that takes advantage of them, rendering them alienated from their own subjectivity and agency. CDA is a method of analysis used by linguists to expose just such ideological work in which power imbalances are constructed through discourse. Also, this study offers evidence from quantitative and qualitative data that reveals that buried in the text of this trade deal are stipulations that would harm the vast majority of Americans, as well as the citizens of other nations. Specifically, the terms of the TPP will be shown to strengthen a globalized neoliberal trade agenda that will deprive nation states of due process in disputes with corporations, restrict the development of new and less expensive generic drugs, stifle the creativity of artists who rely on the internet to promote their work, and widen the already vast economic disparities between ruling elites and the average citizen in every signatory country. A Closer Look at Neoliberalism Neoliberal capitalism refers to the rebirth of the liberal economic ideas of the 19 century, which celebrated free market philosophies and laissez faire economics, hence the term "neo liberalism." 3 Spearheaded in the early 1970's by economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, neoliberalism opposes Keynesian economics of government aid and market intervention in favor of free market fundamentalism and the privatization of formerly public services. Political proponents, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and others since have privatized formerly public entities such as energy, water, transportation, health, education, roads and prisons, shifting many of the costs of such services to individuals. Through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organization, neoliberal policies have been imposed worldwide. In the process labor unions have been weakened and destroyed. Structural economic, social and political causes of poverty and other social ills are minimized or ignored. Massive tax cuts go to the rich, and businesses in every realm have been deregulated, so that 3 Pauline Johnson, "Sociology and the Critique of Neoliberalism Reflections on Peter Wagner and Axel Honneth,"  2014) 516 33, doi:10.1177/1368431014534354. Hollis A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty communication+1 Vol. 6 [2017] Iss. 1, Article 5 2 many environmental, health and safety standards have disappeared. On the personal level, psychologists have found that neoliberalism seeks to cultivate social subjects who are competitive and individualistic, who must constantly strive to acquire new skills and "rebrand" themselves on social media to keep their workplace talents or social status known and secure. The neoliberal worker must be seen as self reliant and entrepreneurial, less he or she be replaced by someone who has more of these qualities. At the same time, because of the cutbacks in federal and state benefits, the neoliberal employee is anxious and insecure, too often living in a situation of precarity, without the public mental health services that might help to alleviate the psychic pain. David Harvey, leading scholar and critic of neoliberalism, has argued, "Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse and has pervasive effects on ways of thought and political economic practices to the point where it has become incorporated into the common sense way we interpret, live in and understand the world." Harvey continues, "If markets do not exist