A new bit of vocabulary relating to use the mobile phone made itself known to me this morning: “fexting”. It seems to be fighting by text; that’s where the “f” comes in. Apparently the Bidens do it in the white house so that the secret service doesn’t note down every argument they have. It appears that presidential communications are preserved for historical record! Who knew? But it seems that they have been arguing by text for years; it began as a way of preventing the children overhearing their arguments. Fair enough!
In my daughter’s house they often communicate via text and occasionally, if texting doesn’t work fast enough, they will phone each other. It’s a rather tall house: entrance hall, downstairs loo and kitchen on the ground floor; living room and two bedrooms (one of them tiny) on the first floor, two bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor. So it’s quite possible for the family to be spread around the house, especially as the eldest son spends a good deal of time playing computer games in his top floor bedroom and his sister often works from home, in other words from her first floor bedroom. If she’s not working she might well be reading in her room. The paterfamilias might well be working from home in the living room while my daughter spreads her teacher-prep material over the kitchen table. So communication by phone is a useful tool. The smallest people could be with any of the aforementioned family members, which is just as well as they don’t have mobile phones … yet!
Our own house is similarly tall but we tend to leave doors open and as a rule a good shout or a shrill whistle up the stairs serves well as a means of communication. Only rarely to we resort to our mobile phones. In any case, one or other of us is likely to have left our phone in some other part of the house. As far as I know none of us resort to “fexting”. We try not to argue!
Group chats work well, however, as a means of keeping in touch between the three household: my house, my daughter’s house and her eldest daughter’s house. Such is modern living. My grandmother would be twiddling her thumbs in amazement and declaring in amazement, “Just fancy!”.
Psychologists and counsellors, however, warn that text arguments could just add to problems for couples. Text messages, like emails, can be misconstrued as there is no facial expression or body language to take into account. Hence the rise of emojis!
One couples and families counsellor said that texts also risked “memorialising” rows, with phone and chat app messages often being brought up during therapy as a documentary record of troubled relationships. “The ability for people to go back and look over them can be tricky in terms of people healing and moving on because it’s something you can return to, fester over, or be upset by again.”
Here’s some more vocabulary of interest, some old, some relatively new:
Mansplaining - the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner that is seen to be condescending or patronising. Often finished off with “Did that make sense, love?”
Manterrupting - when a man decides he needs to make a contribution to “help” his female companion explain something.
And now I’ve come across “hepeating”. It’s new to me but was coined by friends of the US physics professor and astronomer Nicole Gugliucci, who announced it to the world in a tweet on 22 September 2017. This is what Prof Gugliucci originally tweeted: “My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea and it’s ignored, but then a guy says the same thing and everyone loves it”.
There you go!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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