Worthen's Essay 'Stop Saying I Feel Like'

Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’ Analysis Worthen’s thesis is that the phrase “I feel like…” is a threat to our society because it allows one to avoid arguments and devalues emotions that are sometimes essential to the argument. Worthen claims that the phrase allows one to avoid “rigorous debate over structures of society that are hard to change”. Worthen supports this claim with people’s quotes that have a similar perspective on what the phrase does. Worthen wrote that Natasha Pangarkar, a senior at Williams College, said, “When you use the phrase…, it gives you an out. You’re not stating the fact as much as an opinion. It’s an effort to make our ideas more palatable to the other person”. Essentially, the phrase “I feel like…” serves the purpose of making our ideas seem more acceptable than what they actually are. It stagnates the development of a rigorous debate because the phrase allows one to not truly argue about a certain perspective or point through evidence or an opinion, but rather attempt to make the idea seem …show more content…
According to Worthen, “the phrase cripples our range of expression and flattens the complex role that emotions do play in our reasoning”. The phrase uses the word “feel” incorrectly to where the meaning of it changes where it isn’t as important as it used to be. It doesn’t serve as an emotion that plays a part in one’s reasoning of the stance they take on a specific topic. It now serves as an escape mechanism from engaging in a meaningful argument and to avoid it entirely. Without that emotion, its whole purpose as the part of the reasoning becomes irrelevant and is then incorporated into the phrase “I feel like…”, destroying the meaning of both argument and emotions that clearly have a distinction between each other. The reasoning that is so crucial to any argument is nonexistent once the emotions loses its power as the power behind the