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.
Source: Stop Saying I Feel LikeI 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.
Its 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.
