Language Under Discussion

The instability of meaning in metapragmatic neologisms

Judith Bridges — 2023-01-10

In this response I address the discussion notes written in reply to my focus article, “Explaining -splain in digital discourse.” In the remarks from Andrea R. Leone-Pizzighella, Bárbara Marqueta Gracia, Chaim Noy, François Cooren, Barbara Fultner, and Ursula Lutzky and Robert Lawson, some common themes emerged regarding the instability of meanings, how we treat neologisms, and some research methods for understanding the equivocal nature of metapragmatic neologisms. My reply addresses these issues. With the intent to accomplish the sort of productive, interdisciplinary conversation that Language Under Discussion promotes, I hope my reflection and final contribution helps us better understand language and communication.

The evolution of splain terms and the spirit of Citizen Sociolinguistics

Andrea Leone-Pizzighella — 2021-12-17

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.

Metapragmatic neology in digital discourse

Bárbara Marqueta Gracia — 2021-12-24

This note addresses the topic of Judith Bridges’s focus article, namely ‑splain neologisms such as mansplain, thinsplain and covidsplain, from the perspective of morphological theory. I attempt to show that Morphopragmatics, a subfield of morphology, can account for the complex pragmatics of word formation processes like those in ‑splain neology. I propose that the analysis of ‑splain words as constructional idioms, under the framework of Construction Morphology, provides a suitable account of the pragmatic effects associated with the innovations in this lexical pattern.

The ethnomethodology of metapragmatics in everyday interaction

Chaim Noy — 2022-01-17

This discussion note is inspired by, and in turn expands on, a few themes and threads laid out in Judith Bridges’s “Explaining ‘-splain’ in digital discourse”. The note stresses the focus and contribution linguistic anthropologists have made to understanding various types of indexical meaning-making practices, and the order of indexicality. This discussion note also briefly details the affordances of the word “explain” and the suffix “x-plain”, which may account for why this suffix, and not others, has come to be used so frequently.

What language is doing

François Cooren — 2022-05-01

This article is meant to initiate a dialogue with Judith Bridges about the performativity of language. By analyzing how social media users talk about what language is doing, especially when these users accuse someone of whitesplaining, mansplaining, or other forms of [X]-splaining, I show that they implicitly acknowledge what has been called elsewhere the ventriloquial dimension of communication. By ventriloquation, I mean that whenever we speak, write or, more generally, communicate, an act of delegation always takes place, which means that what is said, written or communicated can be presented by others as making us say things that we had not necessarily anticipated. This form of delegation, which is typical of the episodes analyzed by Bridges and that I identify as a form of downstream ventriloquation, is contrasted with upstream forms of ventriloquation, that is ventriloquations by which other actors are deemed as expressing themselves through what is being said or, more generally, communicated. I believe that the identification of these two forms of ventriloquation can help us analyze the performativity of language that interests Bridges.

Discussing -splain

Ursula Lutzky — 2022-08-27

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 ‑splain, utilised in words such as whitesplain, covidsplain, and thinsplain, and expand on them by addressing three key concerns: we situate the construction and use of ‑splain 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 ‑splain are subject to moral gradience, highlighting directions and opportunities for future research.

Languaging in the age of Meta

Barbara Fultner — 2022-10-22

Judith Bridges’ analysis of -splain discourse illustrates the slipperiness of language in the age of Twitter, microblogging, and cancel culture and helps explain why having meaningful public discourse seems increasingly difficult. X-splaining is a form of epistemic injustice. I suggest that, barring a Humpty-Dumpty theory of meaning, attempts to recontextualize neologisms like mansplain to make them antonyms of their original meanings should be seen as misuses. Moreover, -splain terms creatively and conveniently compress multiple meanings into one, but can also function to cut off dialogue, making it harder to hold speakers accountable for their claims.

Explaining "-splain" in digital discourse

Judith Bridges — 2021-07-31

Combining digital discourse analysis and Citizen Sociolinguistics, methodological frames that contend with the effects of evolving digital practices, I present an approach to studying sociolinguistic trends by investigating how social media users talk about what language is doing.

This approach is applicable to research on a wide range of linguistic and cultural contexts. The particular focus in this paper, however, is on U.S.-based social issues and linguistic features of American English as they appear in pieces of digital discourse from the micro-blogging platforms Twitter and Tumblr. Situated within the highly fractured sociopolitical climate of the pandemic-afflicted United States, the language under discussion provides a glimpse of some historically relevant sociocultural beliefs and attitudes towards the role of gender and racial identity in sociopolitical discourse. Focusing on uses of -splain, a metapragmatic bound morpheme, the paper demonstrates how social media users assemble lexical, discursive, and other semiotic resources as means for negotiating sociopragmatic appropriateness. The analysis shows how the usage of words like mansplain encompass the sociolinguistic process of enregisterment through practices of linguistic reflexivity, creativity, and regimentation – practices that are essential aspects of interaction and participation in social media. Using these enregistered metapragmatic words problematizes imbalances in users’ sociopragmatic ideologies, namely who can or cannot say what, to whom, and in what manner. I show how creative metapragmatic language is deployed to discuss issues of entitlement and epistemic authority in communicative dynamics. I draw on theoretical frames that reveal how the recontextualization and resemiotization of -splain words and other metapragmatic neologisms are performances of identity. I also show how splain-mediated communication facilitates users in achieving their own discursive intentions to point out language in judgmental and/or lighthearted manners. I assert that attention to metapragmatic neologisms in the perspective of Citizen Sociolinguistics enhances the analytical repertoire of digital discourse analysis.