The words “no,” “not,” and “never” demolish every declarative or affirmative statement in the English language. Overusing them could hinder good communication and prevent things from getting done in our everyday life.
Before going deeply into the pitfalls of excessive negation, though, let’s first recognize its obviously useful aspects. There’s no point arguing against alarmist phrasing to emphasize clear and imminent danger: “Caution! Don’t touch! High voltage!” “Danger! Don’t enter! Highly radioactive area!” We can also forgive lawyers or word-weasels for crafting bullying statements like these: “All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without prior written permission of the author.” “
No trespassing! Entry
without authorization will subject intruders to criminal prosecution.”
This kind of negative communication obviously has short-term shock appeal, but too much of it can invite open resistance and hostility. Their repeated use fosters doubt, mistrust, and discouragement in their receivers, making further communication with them increasingly difficult. This is why people who need other people’s cooperation need to make every effort to find a more graceful tact for expressing negation. Call it affirmative communication or diplomacy or public relations, but what it basically does is to use positive phrasing even for intrinsically negative messages.
The virtue and value of emphasizing the positive rather than the negative is easy to see. Compare these statement-pairs: “Don’t you dare do that!”
(“I suggest you try doing this.) “I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”
(“Are you sure you are doing the right thing?”) “You cannot be relied upon to do anything properly!”
(I wish I could rely more on you to do things properly.”) Emphasizing the negative heightens the expectation of failing to get the desired result; emphasizing the positive heightens the expectation of succeeding in getting it.
Negation in language is indeed no small a thing; it is too major a thing to trifle with by all too casually inserting a “no” or “not” into a positive statement. In our writing as in our face-to-face interactions, excessive negation could create serious barriers to communication. It’s clearly no accident that the English language has evolved so many ways of expressing negation positively. The wealth of words in English for affixal negation is, in fact, proof that over the centuries, native English speakers had gone to great semantic lengths to avoid using an outright “no” or “not” when expressing negation. Thus were born thousands of new words with the negative aspect already built into them.
Consider these statements that use “no” or “not,” and contrast them with their equivalents using affixal negation or, better yet, deliberately positive semantics: “Have I
not told you that it’s
not necessary for you to make that trip?”
(“I said that trip might be unnecessary.”) “Even if your data are generally favorable, they are
not yet sufficient, so you
could not yet conclude that your theory is valid.”
(“The data to support your theory is still inconclusive.”) “We
cannot admit anybody to this club
unless he is suitably recommended by a member.”
(“We will be happy to admit to this club anyone suitably recommended by a member.”)Before getting fixated with the thought that “no” and “not” are totally undesirable, we need to give due recognition to their supremely positive semantic virtue—their power to delicately flavor understatement, irony, euphemism, and other nonliteral forms of expression. Feel the pleasant undertow of this negative statement: “He’s
not exactly a saint.” Much better than the positive, straightforward “He’s
a sinner,” don’t you think? And take a look at this negative euphemism: “Mr. and Mrs. Smith
do not access e-mail.” Isn’t it an exquisitely sociable way of saying that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith are
incapable of using the Internet,” or, even more galling, that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith are
Internet-illiterate”?
Indeed, by using the barest minimum of “no” and “not” in our prose, we definitely can be much more effective and pleasant communicators in the English language.
Read this column and listen to its voice recording in
The Manila Times:
Too much negation and its dangers(Next:
Parenthetically speaking) June 29, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
