The Negative Canon: Double Negatives – An Absolute No-No?

This post is one in a series about The Negative Canon.

Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was.

That’s from Chaucer’s description of the Sergeant of Law in the ‘Canterbury Tales’. See anything wrong with it? Perhaps you will in translation: ‘There wasn’t nowhere a man so busy’ (nas was the negative of was in Middle English). Taking the mathematical approach favoured by the critics of double negation, it would mean: ‘There was everywhere a man just as busy’. The following line shows clearly that that is not the intended meaning. Similarly, he writes of the Prioress:

Wel koude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe
That no drope ne fille upon hir brist

The mathematical approach would tell us that she made sure that a drop DID fall on her breast, because in translation it reads ‘She knew how to take a little piece of food, and see to it that no drop didn’t fall on her breast.’ We know from the rest of the description of the Prioress that it cannot possibly bear that meaning.

Just as no one can seriously believe that the mathematical readings are what Chaucer intended, so no one can seriously believe that Shakespeare intended us to understand that in ‘Twelfth Night’ the cross-dressing Viola means that a woman WOULD be mistress of her heart when she says:

I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth.
And that no woman has, nor never none
Shall be mistress of it, save I alone.

Before English became fully standardised an increasing number of negatives strengthened the force of the negation. There was no question of one negative cancelling another, and that is still the case in nonstandard dialects, as Mick Jagger showed us when he sang that he couldn’t get no satisfaction. As Peter Trudgill writes in his paper ‘Standard English: What It Isn’t’:

Standard English lacks multiple negation, so that no choice is available between I don’t want none, which is not possible, and I don’t want any. Most nonstandard dialects of English around the world permit multiple negation.

Those who regard double negatives as illogical should try telling that to the French. In French, it is single negation that is nonstandard. The standard requires the negative ne to be followed after the verb by the negative pas, or by other negatives such as rien (nothing) or nul (not any, none).

‘Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage’ (MWDEU) repeats Otto Jespersen’s point that negation in English is often marked, at least in speech, by the unstressed –n’t (and was marked in the past by the particle ne). This may often be felt inadequate, and ‘hence, there has long been a tendency to strengthen the negative idea by adding more negative elements to the sentence.’ In tracing the history of objections to double negation, MWDEU gives due credit to Bishop Lowth, who stated firmly in ‘A Short Introduction to English Grammar’:

Two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative . . .

As examples of what Lowth calls ‘a relique of the ancient style, abounding with negatives; which is now grown wholly obsolete’ he, too, quotes from Shakespeare and Chaucer.

Lowth’s proscription was reinforced by later grammarians, but, according to MWDEU, double negation was disappearing from literature anyway by the time Lowth was writing. MWDEU’s further comment is worth quoting in full:

What was happening was that their sphere of use was contracting; they were still available but were restricted to familiar use – conversation and letters. And, since old forms persist the longest among the least educated, the double negative became generally associated with the speech of the unlettered. In modern use, the double negative is widely perceived as a rustic and uneducated form, and is indeed common in the speech of less educated people.

There are two important points here. The first is that it is the least educated who preserve the older forms of the language. Those who vaunt their conservative tastes might like to reflect on that. The second is that the uneducated are often the underprivileged and the underprivileged tend to attract the scorn of those more fortunate. The language they use is an easy target, but the language of the underprivileged is just as linguistically valid as all other varieties.

Jenny Cheshire, at the time Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, elaborates this point in her chapter entitled ‘Double Negatives Are Illogical’ in that excellent book ‘Language Myths’, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. She reports that, prompted by an invitation from the BBC in 1986, listeners to a Radio 4 programme in 1986 included double negatives among their top ten complaints about grammatical usage. British readers might not be surprised to hear of the suffering endured by the Radio 4 listeners who responded. (For non-British readers, BBC Radio 4 listeners, and I am of their number, are typically middle class and middle aged.) They said double negatives ’made their blood boil’, ‘gave a pain in the ear’, ‘made them shudder’ and ‘appalled’ them. I imagine similar responses would be given today.

Towards the end of the chapter, Cheshire comments that

. . . double negatives of the I don’t want nothing type, which nowadays are not used by politicians, potential poet laureates or scientists, but by Harlem youths, London East Enders and other groups in the community whose ancestors escaped the demands of polite society and the prescriptions of grammarians. These double negatives represent the survival of along-established pattern of negation in English and a natural pattern of negation in language generally. They might be recognized in this way if our greatest playwrights still used them. But as it is, they are stigmatized.

That means, in MWDEU’s words, that:

. . . it is not a prestige form; you are not likely to impress the boss, the teacher, or the job interviewer by using double negatives . . . You just have to pick your occasions.

Indeed. The skill in using language lies not in blindly following a set of arbitrary prescriptions, but in being sensitive to what grammatical constructions, what vocabulary, and even what accent, are appropriate at a particular time, in a particular place and for a particular purpose.

I have said nothing here about the use of the double negative as what MWDEU calls a weak affirmative, as in a not unpleasant day’. There is something to be said about it, but that use is not, I think, a candidate for inclusion in the Negative Canon. The other is.