Between Transparency and Opacity

A Critical Analysis of Accountability Avoidance Strategies in Tech Companies’ Crisis Discourse

Abstract

This article develops an analytical framework grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the linguistic strategies employed by major technology corporations in their crisis communication. The analysis reveals the production of what can be termed a “rhetoric of evasion,” where carefully crafted discursive devices—such as semantic vagueness, temporal reframing, collective dissolution, and unspecified referentiality—are mobilized to obscure responsibility, neutralize critique, and redirect public attention. These corporate discourses do not merely respond to external pressure but actively reconstruct institutional self-representations by simulating ethical values such as accountability and transparency without concretecommitment. Bylinkingthesepracticestotheoreticalnotions like hegemony, governmentality, and ideological interpellation, the article demonstrates how language becomes a strategic resource for symbolic legitimation and institutional conflict management. It concludes by calling for a more refined analytical toolkit capable of uncovering the entangled relationship between discursive form and power dynamicsin contemporary institutional communication.