Features Jul 15, 2015 at 4:00 am

The Origins and Virtues of One of English's Most Popular Qualifiers

Women use the phrase more than men do. David Lasky

Comments

1
The biggest stupidest word ever is "interesting." It is meaningless and lazy. Never say anything is "interesting" just skip the boring word and get into the explanation of why x interests you.
3
Students who attend the http://ai.neocities.org/GIX.html -- Genocidal Innovation eXchange will never be allowed to stand up and say "I feel like". Instead, they will have to say, "I agree with the Communist Part of China."
4
This was a very entertaining read. I feel like I learned something.
5
Fascinating. I've enjoyed all of your pieces for the Stranger so far. Glad they added you.
Is there a way that women-leadership of language is tied-in with vocal fry and women are trendsetting there too? Not that I have an opinion for or against vocal fry, although I am a woman who does not have vocal fry.
6
One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was from the scholarship coordinator at Western Washington University. She was working over an essay of mine and replaced the word "feel" with "think" in every case. It works 100% of the time and makes you own what you're thinking while still retaining the indeterminate character of your assertion.
7
I feel like a French fry.
8
This is a well crafted argument on taking a non-place. You've successfully mummified yourself in non-committal rhetoric, feigning open-mindedness to all view points. While, what I can best derive as your thesis, being that women are dooming themselves to an image of wishy-wash by prefacing their thoughts with "feeling like"; I have to ask, is this a parody? If so, bravo, you truly nailed it! If I was in a boardroom I would devour you. Unless it was a boardroom full of parody authors, then we'd probably give you a toast! Toast smeared with lonely sack crab, whose cause of death is unclear, but likely due to their muddied water habitat.

Allow me to put you in your place the way only a women who feels can. I say, instead of trying to qualify everything people say, give listening a go. You may actually hear something that blows away the cloud of patriarchal linguistics. Perhaps, with the air cleared, you'll be able to have a point of view, or at least the gusto to feel without quotation marks.
9
Well this one's easy for me, I don't really have many feelings so I don't feel like anything most of the time so me saying I feel like would almost never happen.
10
I'm sorry, but I just feel like this policing of "women's" vocabulary is little more than mansplaining misogyny.

Or, put in more verbose yet palatable language...

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/07/can-we-j…
11
@7 - I think like a french fry.

"I feel like" is a non-confrontational qualifier. In conversations that begin that way, the heart of the issue is usually revealed a few sentences later.
12
This is a tangent, but I have trouble with the turn of phrase, "And I was like..." only because I often have to clarify whether the person actually said what follows, or just thought it.

E.g., (them) "My mom said, 'Please be quiet,' and I was like, 'Who the fuck do you think you are telling me to be quiet??'"
(me) "Woah! That's amazing... Wait a minute, did you actually say that, or just think it?"
(them) "Oh, I just thought it."
(me) "Did you say anything?"
(them) "No."
(me) "Oh."

Thank you for reading this far.
13
@8 - "While, what I can best derive as your thesis, being that women are dooming themselves to an image of wishy-wash by prefacing their thoughts with 'feeling like'; I have to ask, is this a parody?"

Your reading comprehension sucks. The author is very clearly arguing the opposite of this.

He BEGINS with the thesis that "women are dooming themselves to an image of wishy-wash by prefacing their thoughts with 'feeling like,'" but he clearly switches gears to point out that women are ACTUALLY leading the charge in changing the language, as well as pointing out that men hedge just as much as women, while simply using different phrases.

So ... was your comment parody? Because otherwise, I think you need to read through this well-researched article again.
14
Dorimonsonfan @1 The interesting thing about your comment is how Dori (he guy you have such a hard-on over and so desperately want to impress by posting your adoration where you know he reads) uses 'interesting' frequently in exactly the way you argue one shouldn't. Isn't that interesting?
15
This article is needlessly verbose. Get someone to edit for you next time.
16
@10 That article says pretty much exactly the same thing this one does.
17
One of the best books on the subject: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of … by Marshall Rosenberg. In it, he explains how to get in touch with 'feelings' and differentiate them from 'thoughts.' Sometimes we get the 2 mixed up. I really like the book. Helps me a lot in life.
18
I feel like, OMG, like, you know, totally, like I feel... ummm super awesome....like.... ya!
19

Sometimes I feel...
SomeTIMES I feel...
Like I been tied
To the whipping post
Tied
To the whipping post
TIED
To the whipping post
Good...Lord...I...feel....like..I'm..dying'

20
I intentionally affected this language choice to annoy misogynists in the late nineties, after which y'all copied me.
21
In that 70's classic, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, near the beginning of the film one guy tells another, "tell me how you really feel!" The other guy says something like, "I feel that you have a really stupid haircut!"
I bring this up because rather than being used as a qualifier or hedge, "I feel" in this case was employed to provide an air of legitimacy to a pretty lame opinion. "You have a stupid haircut" is just a dumb thing to say, but preceded by "I feel," in the 70's enthusiasm for self-actualization, it was taken to be something authentic and therefore of immense value.

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