Many years ago I realized that, while teaching, I was automatically adding the one-word question, “right?” to the end of a lot of my sentences.
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I believe I contracted this tic from a professor of mine during my student days. But given how common this verbal habit is among philosophers while teaching or giving talks, there’s no way he could be the sole vector responsible for its spread.
I think I’ve stopped doing it, mostly, but I’m not sure, just as I’m not sure how many “uhs and umms” come out of my mouth during a lecture.
I stopped because it’s not a good way to communicate. I mean, on the surface, I suppose it could seem like a kind of super-vigilant approach to making sure your audience understands you, a regular brief check for comprehension. But that is not how it comes off at all. Rhetorically, it functions as the opposite of a real question. To the audience it feels like you are, bizarrely, constantly declaring that what you’ve just said is right. It comes off as pushy, which is a really odd fit with how philosophy is supposed to operate. If the argument you’ve made is a good one, all you need to do is explain it well and we’ll see that; no push necessary.
“Right?” is just one of many behavioral oddities that seem a bit more common among philosophers than other academics or the general population. Since they tend to be adopted subconsciously, we may be unaware of the verbal or gestural tics we’ve picked up owing to our time in philosophy. Sometimes we can learn about these by seeing them in others. Yet if we’ve witnessed them too many times, we may be inured to their oddness. In short, we may not realize what we’re doing or that what we’re doing is a weird thing a fair number of philosophers do.
Of course, not all of the tics we adopt as we’re trained in philosophy are bad. But it would be good to be aware of them so we can be a bit more thoughtful about their use and more effective in our communication, including our communication with students, with other faculty, and with the rest of the world. So if you know of other tics we tend to have, tell us about them. If you don’t, maybe ask a non-philosopher about them.
(Note: this post is not an invitation to mock individual philosophers; mock us as a group, sure, but there’s no need to single anyone out.)
Oh, and of course there’s this classic bit on this topic:
