Affixmaxxing or the emergence of new derivational affixes in online discourse

A construction morphology approach

Abstract

In this article I trace the development of what I claim to be new derivational affixes found in the language of a selected online community. The elements analysed originate from the so-called manosphere in general, and the discourse of incels in particular. These online-based communities can be characterized by, among many features, the cryptic jargon that they habitually employ in their discourse. In this paper I pay particular attention to three affixes used originally exclusively in the manosphere (-maxx, -mog, - cel). Their development can be described using the theoretical apparatus proposed by Mattiello (2017; 2022). I also claim that their emergence can be best accounted for in the methodological framework of construction morphology (Booij, 2010; Hüning and Booij, 2014).This approach is a better fit in the case of the emergence of new derivational affixes compared to the grammaticalization methodology that has been traditionally used for tracing the emergence of inflectional affixes. Nonetheless, these two approaches (grammaticalization and constructionalization) are not incompatible and can be used as complementary tools to provide a more fit-for-purpose method for studying various kinds of language change.