Youthwashing in the context of X-WASHING metadiscourses

Abstract

This article focuses on the occasionalism youthwashing and aims to capture some features of critical discourses on sustainability rhetorics and corporate wording. Particular attention is paid to the questions of where this ad hoc compound draws its effect from and which social attitudes it reflects. Within an introductory discourse-semantic embedding, the expression is firstly considered in the light of the paradigm x-washing (greenwashing), with special attention to the context, meta-linguistic signals and recurrent argumentation patterns. Secondly, the axiological and deontic connotations of youthwashing are explored departing from the question of what the analysed paradigm says about the concepts of being young and youth. On a theoretical level, the article attempts to interpret the discourse elements that can be subsumed under x-washing with regard to the characteristics of Problematisierungsdiskurse (Winkler 2021; Bereswill et al. 2021) and in the context of the meta-linguistic counterdiscourses on „simulative democracy“ (Blühdorn 2013).