Dr Goodword’s Language Blog mentions something that I have seen before and thought about commenting on:
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day and said, “In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However,” he pointed out, “in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative.” But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
I [Dr Goodword] responded that intonation was a crucial factor in his example.
As Dr G. says, intonation is the key to understanding the intended meaning. However, the point of the special intonation used here is that it expresses irony – and the point of irony is that words are used to express the opposite of their literal meaning.
It was not in fact a linguistics professor who said this, but the philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford, who developed the theory of speech acts. And the wiseacre was not a student but Sidney Morgenbesser of Columbia, philosopher and wit. More Morgenbesserisms.
Posted by: John Cowan | 02/07/2013 at 00:59
Thank you John. I had seen that exchange quoted before but never, to my recollection, with proper attribution.
Posted by: Peter Harvey | 02/07/2013 at 12:37