Double Negatives

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

You may be surprised to learn that I scored higher on the SAT in math than I did in language.  Quite a bit higher, actually.  It just so happens that I disliked math and put little effort into it.  Writing and literature, though?  Loved them.  Still do.

Still, I grasped math concepts with relative ease, so I performed well.  Take for example, the concept of two negatives making a positive in multiplication.  See there?  I know some math.

The double negative concept holds true for language, too, but unlike math where no one will do you bodily harm for putting two negatives together, two negatives in language can be deadly – at least to how people interpret you.

Here’s how the double negative works in language: I don’t have no explanation actually means that you must have some explanation.  Not having nothing means having something, right?  But people using double negatives rarely mean what their words really state.  In using a double negative, the speaker or writer actually winds up saying the exact opposite of what is intended.  Unless what is intended is to make oneself appear to be a fool who uses double negatives when, in fact, one is just a fool trying to lead one’s audience astray.

I haven’t the vaguest notion how the double negative came about.  Its relative commonness, however, indicates that it has been in existence for a long time and that it is a widely accepted construction in certain groups.  I know it was a problem for a number of students at my former school, and I hear double negatives used in situation comedies with relative regularity.  And it’s somewhat pervasive in music.

I have to say, though, that in the case of music, sometimes songs just work better with the inclusion of the double negative.  Hit me with the grammar stick, if you like, but I think that The Rolling Stones’s “Satisfaction” would be much less satisfactory if the lyrics were, “I can’t get any satisfaction.”

Besides that, the lyrics are so true if you interpret them as written: Mick Jagger, possibly one of the ugliest men on the planet, is not exactly short of satisfaction, I feel quite certain.  He just isn’t capable of getting no satisfaction.