The evolution of splain terms and the spirit of Citizen Sociolinguistics

A note on methods

Abstract

I situate Bridges’s study of ‑splain and its social outgrowths and implications within the framework of Rymesian Citizen Sociolinguistics, offering clarity on the methodological differences between this approach and other approaches that have been conflated with it. I agree with Bridges’s addition of critical discourse analysis and neology to the Citizen Sociolinguistics method and with her use of metapragmatics to shed light on the emergence of new personae associated with the weaponization of (man)splain and its associated call-out culture.