Confusing Multiple Negatives: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

{{quote|'''Scott''': Double negatives are hard :(|''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]''}}

 

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In the Cave Cricket episode of ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', Kyon does this and lampshades it, asking himself how many negatives he just strung together (we counted 6).

 

* [[DCU|Bizarro]] is easy to understand, in theory: he says the opposite of what's true. [[Depending on the Writer|Some writers don't seem to understand this absurdly simple concept,]] and have him speak in absurd chains of multiple-negatives, making it impossible to understand what he's trying to say. [[Mind Screw|On top of that,]] he also varies from just backwards to [[The Ditz|stupid]] to ''actually evil,'' meaning that even if you figure out ''what he's supposed to be saying,'' it ''still'' might be the opposite of what's actually ''true.'' '''Damn it.'''

** It's harder than it sounds on the surface - imagine ''just saying his name.'' Equally qualifying for "Reverse of 'I am Bizarro,' with more [[Hulk Speak]]" are "Me no am Bizarro," "You am Bizarro," or even "You am not Bizarro."<ref>Seriously. "You (opposite of "me") no (hulkspeak for "aren't," so opposite of "am/are") am not (also opposite of "am") Bizarro"</ref> Or any of the above, with "''Superman''" in place of "Bizarro," because Bizarro is the opposite of Superman! ''That's just saying his name.'' Now, imagine whole conversations with that logic, and each writer having a different idea of which of these to use. How do you not break the opposite-day rule and still have Bizarro make ''any'' sense at all? He is by nature the poster boy for this trope, and it's no wonder all television adaptations of him cast the whole idea to the four winds (though ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]'' keeps the [[Hulk Speak]].)

 

 

== Film ==

** [[Fridge Logic|Though "I don't know where he's not" is always a lie]], as you can ''always'' name a place where a given person ''isn't.''

*** [[Fridge Brilliance|Or you can take that to mean]] "I don't know all the places where he's not", giving it a double meaning (knowing as in having visited those places).

* This trope was played with in ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure|Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey]]''.

* A botched translation of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Fellowship of the Ring]]'' had Saruman claim "He can't not yet take physical form" when referring to [[Big Bad|Sauron]]. The creator of the website showing the botched translation baffled over what the double negative meant before promptly giving up.

* The ''[[Clue (film)|Clue]]'' movie has 2 instances-

** First, while discussing Col. Mustards 'midnight rendevouz'-

'''Wadsworth''': A double negative! }}

** And then later when the Colonel asks Wadsworth if anyone else is in the house-

'''Wadsworth:''' Yes. }}

* Becomes a major plot point in ''[[The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra|The Lost Skeleton Returns Again]]'' after Chinfa, Queen of the Cantaloupe People, is introduced to the concept of the double negative.

* The satirical article "Babbage: The Language of the Future" by Tony Karp in ''Datamation'' magazine described a programming language with "only obvious deficiencies." Instead of the conventional "DO WHILE," it offered several novel loop statements, including the "DON'T DO WHILE NOT" loop, which would be "not executed if the test condition is not false (or if it's Friday afternoon)."

** The Perl programming language has the 'unless' keyword to test for the false value of a condition. This may occasionally lead to convoluted looking code; the book 'Programming Perl' written by the language's main creator notes that to avert this trope the 'unless' test can't use the 'else' keyword to create an alternate branch of the test.

* The Duchess in ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'': "Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." <ref>(The second version of the moral actually reduces to "Never imagine yourself to be what you are not", which does not ''quite'' mean the same as the first version.)</ref>

 

* Jon Stewart's song about Hanukkah in ''[[The Colbert Report|A Colbert Christmas]]: [[Christmas Special|The Greatest Gift Of All]]'' contains one that doesn't seem to work as intended. "I wouldn't know from jolly / But it's not my least unfavourite time of year" doesn't work out positive. Then again, this may be a deliberate subversion.

** It's more like it doesn't work out either positive ''or'' negative, since "not my least unfavorite" doesn't really mean anything. Presumably an "unfavorite" would be anything other than a favorite, so how something can be the ''least'' unfavorite is dubious... and then it's not that.

* In the ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' episode "Window Dressed to Kill", Olive tries to mess with Ned's head by using complex sentences after being on the receiving end of this trope. First, however, she consults a book titled "The Double Negative: What You Shouldn't Not Know".

* In ''[[The Vicar of Dibley]]'', Alice memorably breaks into a long discussion about butter, which ends in this convoluted line. It's more subtle by the fact that Alice is [[The Ditz]], yet her whole side of the exchange is perfectly consistent, and the smarter Vicar ends up baffled.

* In Al TV, when [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] "interviews" [[Eminem]], he calls him out on a triple negative. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPwBdnknGIs "I don't owe nobody in my family nothin"]

* ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' has a scene with a creepy director discussing a nude scene with an actor that gets around to this:

'''Director''': Well, there are no guarantees in this business, Dan, but if there's one thing I can say, it's that I'll try and avoid being very unsurprised if your penis doesn't not get filmed and put on general release up and down the land. }}

* [[The Daily Show]] [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-16-2010/mosque-erade parodied] [[Barack Obama]]'s use of convoluted speech thusly: "But let me be clear: There's no way I would not unsupport the kind of project that this isn't."

 

== Music ==

* "If I Never Stop Loving You" by obscure [[Country Music]] singer David Kersh:

Is never stop loving you }}

** Later lampshaded subtly in verse 2, which has the line "I mean everything I think I just said."

* In "1921" from ''[[Tommy]]'': "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one ever in your life."

* The chorus of Wes Carr's "You" does this:

I'm nothin' if I don't have you }}

 

 

== Radio ==

* In one episode of [[I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again|I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again]], the show is introduced thus:

'''Brooke-Taylor:''' David ... David's flipped again, everybody. }}

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The anti-anti-antidote from the ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'': <small>This is a cup of stuff that will un-un-unpoison you if you get un-unpoisoned.</small>

* In the first ''[[Parappa the Rapper]]'', Cheap Cheap raps that she "ain't got no time for nobody".

* ''[[Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'': When you try to use the lighter on a person, Strong Bad says "I'd love to see him not not on fire, but not not not now.

* ''[[I Am an Insane Rogue AI]]'' does this in a very sneaky way; in one of the level-beginning speeches, the AI says "Your computer has not not yet been compromised. I promise!" The double-not is just a computing hiccup... right?

 

* Appeared once in ''[[Casey and Andy]]''. Casey [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=511 tries to trick the King of Sweden into leaving their couch] by posing him a question with a ridiculous number of varied negatives. The king provides the correct answer without delay, once again proving that you should [[Authority Equals Asskicking|never underestimate a king]].

** Especially funny considering that the king of Sweden is not known to be the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree.

* In ''[[Suicide for Hire]]'', Hunter's father makes a (''very'' successful) attempt to ensure his son's future heterosexuality by giving him a porn magazine and telling him "By the way, I don't not want you not watching not Channel 169 after midnight when we're out of the house."

* A ''[[Dilbert]]'' [http://dilbert.com/fast/1993-03-26/ strip] features the PHB giving Dilbert a document to fill out that features close to a dozen negatives regarding the state of his employment.

'''Boss:''' Use ink. }}

* In ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'', Mantis uses a magnificent one to highlight Ocelot's [[Double Reverse Quadruple Agent]] status:

'''Ocelot ''[shrugging]'':''' Practice. }}

* [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|Kanaya]] of ''[[Homestuck]]''.

{{color|#a10000| AA: s0rry i didnt f0ll0w that}} }}

 

== Web Original ==

* In the [[Loading Ready Run]] sketch "Canadaman," the evil Jacques Francois passes out a petition regarding Quebec sovereignty. Everyone who tries to read it gives up and exclaims, "This petition uses ambiguous phraseology!"

* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'': Sarge utilizes one of these, though more likely because he really thinks that way and is trying to emphasize his point and not because he's trying to confuse anyone.

'''Simmons:''' That was like a... quadruple negative. }}

* Dana in the ''[[Echo Chamber]]'' episode [[Dumbass Has a Point]] initially calls the final intro "not unimpressive", but then corrects herself to "really good".

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** Also Brother Faith from the episode "Faith Off": ''Now correct me if I'm incorrect, but was I told it's untrue that people in Springfield have no faith? Was I not misinformed?''

** And don't forget the chalkboard gag: ''I won't not use no double negatives.''

* That Cajun ferryman from the first ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' movie.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** It can be more than five for Slavic languages. The following sentence in Polish is perfectly grammatical (and, more importantly, easily parsed by a native speaker), despite being unlikely to be used in this exact form: "Nikt nigdy nigdzie niczego nikomu nie zrobił", and it means "Nobody has ever done anything to anyone, anywhere" (word-by-word translation being "Nobody hasn't never, nowhere, done nothing to no-one". While confusing, it becomes easier when you realise that in Slavic languages, words like "anywhere", "anyone", "anything" are ALWAYS replaced by "nowhere", "no one", "nothing" etc. when used in a negative sentence. The number of negatives is irrelevant, every word needs to be negated - whereas one negative is enough to negate the whole sentence in English.

* Double negatives equating to English single negatives exist in French as well.

* [[George Carlin]] told people, "I'm not unwell, thank you," when asked how he was. It usually took them a minute to figure it out.

* Spanish, like the Russian level above, is completely fine with double negatives. For example, the sentence "No té ayudaré nunca" translates literally as "I won't never help you," when it actually means "I will never help you." More than one negative adds emphasis, but it rarely, if ever, goes above two.

* Italian can have double negatives work as simple negatives as well. Sometimes you can avoid them ("Non c'è nessun problema/Non c'è alcun problema" both mean "There's no problem", but while "nessuno" implicates a negation and works just like "no one", "alcuno" doesn't and is similar to "anyone"); sometimes you can't ("Non vedo nessuno" would literally translate in "I don't see no one", while it actually means "I don't see anyone"). It's quite strange if one thinks that Italian is the direct descendant of Latin, and that Latin counts double negatives as positives: the Latin phrase "sine ulla spe" ("senza alcuna speranza" = "without hope") cannot be written as "sine nulla spe" ("without no hope") because it would radically change its meaning. Italian's use of negatives comes from Vulgar Latin, spoken by peasants ad illiterate people who probably wouldn't bother using the correct rules of the original language. Vulgar Latin became soon an almost independent language much more used than Classical Latin, and so its use of the negative form passed on to modern neo-Latin languages such as Spanish, French ad Italian itself, of course.

* A comparatively simple example from the [[American Civil War]]: Congressman Thaddeus Stevens' "retraction" about something he said about Lincoln's first minister of war, fellow Pennsylvania Republican Simon Cameron (accused of corruption) after Cameron objected: "I said that Cameron would not steal a red-hot stove. I now take that back."

* The word "nonfiction" can be confusing for young children when they first hear it. "Fiction" means "not true," while "nonfiction" means "not not true."

* Many pigdin or creole languages are much more accepting of double negatives than their parent languages, and the double negatives are often the standard way of saying "no".

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article]]