Don’t get caught using wrong double negatives!

[Joe Carillo]

I was tempted to write this retrospective on double negatives by the online fracas that erupted recently between two highly placed lawyers—a commissioner of the national poll body versus a state university law dean—over their opposing views on the fatal shooting of a discharged army corporal last April 21 by a police sergeant manning a Covid-19 control checkpoint in Quezon City.

No, I have caught neither of the two lawyers hurling a vicious double negative against the other, but their brickbats reminded me of another Filipino lawyer’s highly provocative rant in late 2013 against banning the use of mobile phones inside bank premises.

           IMAGE CREDIT: STUDY.COM

That third lawyer vehemently declared online: “No law (or anything lower than that) cannot be passed by the Congress to prevent or suppress our right to communication and free speech. These two rights are very sacrosanct in a democracy, no matter how awful the speeches maybe. As you talk on your phone (just not so loud), you are actually effecting what the Constitution allows you to.”

To the flood of outraged comments about that lawyer’s audacious thesis, I expressed in this column my objection to its distracting double negative: “No law (or anything lower than that) cannot be passed by the Congress…” I then advised him that a double negative uses two negatives that cancel each other, thus creating a positive statement. In that particular case, it yielded the unintended contrary sense that Congress can indeed pass a law suppressing free speech.

Aside from “no,” of course, the following negative words likewise nullify a statement: “not,” “none,” “nothing,” “nowhere,” “neither,” “nobody,” “no one,” “hardly,” “scarcely,” and “barely.” This is what happens in grammatically correct sentences like “Not one helped the hit-and-run victim” and “Hardly anybody understood why she resigned.”

Always remember that when properly constructed, double negatives aren’t ungrammatical or illogical. For instance, in the sentence “Scarcely any structure in Tacloban was left unscathed by Typhoon Yolanda,” the negative adverb “scarcely” validly negates the negative adverb “unscathed” and yields the same sense as that of  this positive statement: “Practically all structures in Tacloban were damaged by Typhoon Yolanda.”

In May of 2015, that column of mine on double negatives drew a belated response from a U.S.-based Forum member. He recalled that in the “Fight of the Century” that Floyd Mayweather Jr. won by unanimous decision over international boxer Manny Pacquiao, many people believed that he was “robbed,” to which Manny responded with this double negative during the post-fight interview: “He did not do nothing.”

The Forum member then made this tart comment about that double negative: “Is this statement an admission of defeat and [of the fact] that he was beaten to a pulp? I can’t blame our Honorable Congressman. He must be a victim of poor English instruction.”

To that below-the-belt comment I replied in my column:

“Manny Pacquiao, the boxer and not the congressman, did say ‘He did not do nothing’ after Floyd Mayweather Jr. beat him by unanimous decision. That’s an awful double negative in English-savvy circles, but in the rough-and-tumble world of sports, insiders do talk in double negatives as code and as badge of honor, as when they say ‘I ain’t done nothin’ yet’ and ‘I didn’t go nowhere today.’ (Grammar-conscious speakers would say ‘I haven’t done anything yet’ and ‘I didn’t go anywhere today.’)

“So our Manny may not be an exemplar of good English, but I suspect that the experienced world-class boxer and aspiring thespian that he is, he actually knew that such double negatives are déclassé but just wanted to show to the world that he can very well match if not outclass the Ebonics—that’s Black English—of his arch-nemesis. As they say, if you can’t beat them, join them.”

(Next week: Are you using ‘were’ in the indicative or subjunctive?)   May 7, 2020

This column online in the Manila Times:
“Don’t get caught using wrong double negatives!”
                          
This essay, 1,192nd of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the April 30, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times,© 2020 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

[Gerry T. Galacio]

How do we differentiate between "double negative" and the figure of speech "litotes" which uses double negatives?

Definition of "litotes" from https://literarydevices.net/litotes/

Litotes, derived from a Greek word meaning “simple,” is a figure of speech that employs an understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, a positive statement expressed by negating its opposite expressions.

[Joe Carillo]

You asked how to differentiate between a “double negative” and the figure of speech known as “litotes.”

A double negative is simply a statement using two negatives that cancel each other, thus creating a positive statement; on the other hand, a litotes is a rhetorical form of emphasis in which a statement is expressed by denying its opposite.

Both the double negative and litotes aren’t in themselves ungrammatical or illogical; they become so only when people who don’t know how these language devices work negate them unknowingly , making them wrongly positive or affirmative instead.

A case in point of a perfectly valid double-negative statement, as I presented in my column “Don’t get caught using wrong double negatives!” above, is this sentence: “Scarcely any structure in Tacloban was left unscathed by Typhoon Yolanda.”

Note how the negative adverb “scarcely” validly negates the negative adverbial phrase “was left unscathed” to yield the same sense as that of this positive statement: “Practically all structures in Tacloban were damaged by Typhoon Yolanda.”

But when you make the mistake of negating this positive statement by inserting the negator “not” before the verb “damaged,” as in “Practically all structures in Tacloban were not damaged by Typhoon Yolanda,” you produce a wrong double negative that’s seriously violative or unfaithful to the original sense you wanted to convey.

As to litotes, a perfectly valid and grammatical example is this statement, “No issue is too big or too small not to affect you,” which rhetorically emphasizes its point by using a “not” to deny its opposite, which as you can see is expressed by the double negative “no issue is too big or too small.”

But in 2009, for the closing spiel of the news analysis segment of her TV talk-show in the now defunct “News on Q,” a newspaper columnist blithely overlooked or forgot to insert the negator “not” in her use of the litotes shown above.

Thus, for many weeks running, that TV talk-show’s voice would glibly intone this wrong, self-canceling, and nonsensical litotes to wrap up her TV program: “Remember, no issue is too big or too small to affect you,” with no one noticing the glaring and monumental grammar and semantic boo-boo.

READ THE RELATED FORUM READING ON LITOTES IN FULL:
A recurrent glaring grammar error on cable news TV