Why Starting Sentences with ‘I Feel like’ Is a Conversation Killer

by ParentCo. May 03, 2016

little girl taking on telephone

Pretending that every argument you make is just a hunch you have is self-destructive.
The data suggests that young women use the phrase slightly more often than men, but in my own classes, male students begin almost every statement with “I feel like.” The gender gap is vanishing because the cultural roots of this linguistic shift were never primarily a consequence of gender.

“I feel like” masquerades as a humble conversational offering, an invitation to share your feelings, too — but the phrase is an absolutist trump card. It halts argument in its tracks.

“It’s a way of deflecting, avoiding full engagement with another person or group,” Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, a historian at Syracuse University, said, “because it puts a shield up immediately. You cannot disagree.”

Source: Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’


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