@article{Lutzky_Lawson_2022, title={Discussing -splain: At the intersection of prescriptivism, language policing and moral gradience}, volume={6}, url={https://journals.helsinki.fi/lud/article/view/1847}, DOI={10.31885/lud.6.1.258}, abstractNote={<p>This discussion note offers a response to Judith Bridges’ focus article “Explaining ‘‑splain’ in digital discourse”. We review some of the article’s core findings on the bound morpheme <em>‑splain</em>, utilised in words such as <em>whitesplain</em>, <em>covidsplain</em>, and <em>thinsplain</em>, and expand on them by addressing three key concerns: we situate the construction and use of ‑<em>splain</em> formations in a more expansive version of prescriptivism, what we refer to as ‘prescriptivism 2.0’; discuss them within the context of language policing and political correctness; and ask whether forms ending in ‑<em>splain</em> are subject to moral gradience, highlighting directions and opportunities for future research.</p>}, number={1}, journal={Language Under Discussion}, author={Lutzky, Ursula and Lawson, Robert}, year={2022}, month={Aug.}, pages={54–60} }