A visit to the many prescriptive grammarians who hang out in the blogosphere in order to save English from its speakers will establish what you knew already: your fourth grade teacher disapproved of double negatives.

Double negative equals a positive. It is a truism of traditional grammar that double negatives combine to form an affirmative. Readers coming across a sentence like He cannot do nothing will therefore interpret it as an affirmative statement meaning “He must do something” unless they are prompted to view it as dialect or nonstandard speech. ¹

Your fourth grade teacher may well have been kind, helpful, and truly concerned that you got an education, and from that person you will have learned that in English, two negatives make a positive and thus that I don’t want none in fact means, please mother, pile those mushy canned peas even higher on my plate.

You were probably ten or so when you were first scolded about this, and given the underlying algebra to guide you into the light of grammatical goodness. ²

At ten, you probably hadn’t got so far in math class, so the two negatives make a positive rule would have meant as much to you as colorless green ideas sleep furiously. It sounds good, but there’s something missing — oh yeah, meaning. Of course, so much of what you were taught in fourth grade made no sense, you most likely just nodded politely and chalked it up to adult silliness.

Once you did get far enough into math and understood the origin of the two-negatives-make-a-positive rule, it was too late to go back to fourth grade and ask for clarification.

Miss Lack, if two negatives make a positive, what do three negatives make? How about five? If my mom says ‘I told you to never never never never never disturb my colorless green ideas when they are sleeping,’ does this mean I can poke her colorless green ideas with a stick, sleeping or not, whenever the urge takes me?

If this occurred to you at some point in your schooling, you discovered the limitations of the two-negatives-make-a-positive rule on your own. Most likely it didn’t occur to you, simply because you had heard the rule too often, and absorbed it into your social-grammatical self. Despite the fact that you hear multiple negatives all the time and understand them without resorting to a calculator, despite the fact (as you will learn in French class) that other languages revel in double, triple, multiple negation strategies and survive, even despite the fact that you can appreciate Bob Dylan, who knows a good double negative when he sees one — even after all that, if you do catch yourself using a double negative, you will still look over your shoulder in fear that Miss Lack is standing right there, ready to pounce.

The absurdity of the In-English -two-negatives- make-a-positive logic is there for us all to enjoy, but first you have to shake off the shackles of the grammar police.

For some reason I don’t understand, people are endlessly interested in the distribution of pop v soda v coke v soft drink over space. When I was teaching undergraduates this was one topic that woke everybody up. Arguments were not uncommon, but they were also not very serious in tone.

Now I am amazed to see (via Lousy Linguist, Gene Expression and Andrew Sullivan) a whole website (The Great Pop v Soda Controversy) dedicated to mapping the pop v soda isogloss.

There are dozens and dozens of similar cases of synonyms distributed over space, but as far as I know there is no website dedicated to keeping track of sneakers v gymshoes or pancake v griddle cake or bag v sack. Something about the pop v soda thing captures the imagination, to the point that it’s being called great and controversial.

The Great Vowel Shift, yes. The Great Pop v Soda Isogloss, no.

The Ebonics issue was extremely controversial when the Oakland school board brought it to the public’s attention (and still is, of course). The use of expletives in rap is controversial. The way the current administration has out-orwellianed Orwell himself with its coinages (two highlights in a long list: Patriot Act and Death Tax) is controversial. But pop v soda?

Meh.

I have set up this weblog to help me investigate attitudes about language as it is spoken in the United States. The whole undertaking has to do with the fact that I’m revising English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the U.S., a book designed for use in undergraduate linguistic classes.

There’s more information about me, about the book, and about my research tucked into corners everywhere. Please also feel free to contact me with questions, suggestions or comments at rosinalippi@pobox.com. If you could put ‘English with an Accent’ into the subject line, you will probably get a response more quickly that you would otherwise.

I reserve the right to publish letters, emails and other communications here, in order to provide a response to a question or statement of interest to a broader potential audience. If you want your communications with me to remain anonymous, please say so clearly in the body of your message. I will also contact you to let you know that I am responding to your question or statements publically.

What you will find here:

• essays and parts of chapters I’m writing or revising, for the purposes of commentary and discussion;
• questions for discussion on language related topics;
• surveys and polls designed to get your opinions on specific matters
• links to language-related resources (websites, video clips, newspaper articles) that might be of interest and possibly lead to discussion
• my response to emails of more general interest

Some topics that will come up:

• the relationship between spelling and pronunciation (for example, aks or ask);
• a court case dealing with the dismissal of a woman from Kenya because of her accent;
• the role of the media in our understanding of how language works, or should work;
• how language is used for communication below the level of consciousness.

For the moment, anyone can comment on posts less than a month old. If this turns out not to work well, I will ask readers to register to be able to comment.

Please note: the first survey is up and active.