Recent takedowns of women who say things such as ‘I feel like’ and ‘sorry’ got Arwa Mahdawi thinking: what can they utter? Here’s her handy cheat sheet The semantic struggle is real. Every day it gets harder and harder to know whether my vocabulary is inadvertently perpetuating a “growing tyranny of feelings” that threatens the very foundations of democracy. Thankfully the internet is full of vocabulary vigilantes eager to spell things out for the rest of the us – the most recent example being Molly Worthen,who recently published an op-ed in the modern York Times urging people to “Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’”. According to Worthen, the phrase is “linguistic hedging” that evades the civilized clash on which democracy is premised.
In case you’re wondering why Worthen is qualified to disclose people what not to say, and she is an assistant professor of history who focuses on conservative Christianity. Her latest book was called Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. I feel like this is an strange way to become an apostle of linguistic reason,but I’m no expert. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com