TY - JOUR AU - Lutzky, Ursula AU - Lawson, Robert PY - 2022/08/27 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Discussing -splain: At the intersection of prescriptivism, language policing and moral gradience JF - Language Under Discussion JA - LUD VL - 6 IS - 1 SE - Discussion Notes DO - 10.31885/lud.6.1.258 UR - https://journals.helsinki.fi/lud/article/view/1847 SP - 54–60 AB - <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> ER -