[Ads-l] -splaining

[Laurence Horn]

In today’s New York Times Book Review, two reviewers use this in similar productive ways, clipped off from “mansplaining” to go its separate ways (a la “burger” or “oholic”) while preserving the connotation of a blithely patronizing condescension.  

In a critical review of a book by John Leland (whose earlier _Hip: a History_ some of us may remember for its indulgence in “crying Wolof”), _Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old_, Jessica Bruder describes Leland’s efforts at “strip-mining” the experiences of his elders for moral lessons:

When, late in the book, he shrugs off a woman’s suggestion that “I was reading too much into things”, it’s hard not to laugh. She’s got his number—he’s old-splaining.

Elsewhere in the same issue, In a favorable review of a book by Elisha Waldman entitled _This Narrow Space: A Pediatric Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem, Uzodinma Iweala writes:

Waldman exhibits a rare self-awareness, avoiding the "Middle-East-splaining” that often accompanies stories from the region. 
 
As Iweala suggests here, part of what it is to X-splain (as in mansplaining itself) is to be un-self-aware (or maybe unaware more generally—unwoke?).  I’m sure I’ve come across other attempts at X-splaining—“whitesplaining” (or “white-’splaining”) gets a number of hits and an urbandictionary entry--but two relatively novel ones in the same section of a newspaper seems like a sign.  Maybe Ben will remind me that the ATNW crew has already explored this culvert of lexicon valley but I trust new data points are always useful.  

LH



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