A Little Double Negative Never Hurt No One

Generally speaking I try to abide by the established grammatical rules of the English language. It’s not like I am one of those notorious, red-pen happy, sentence correcting, self-appointed grammar policemen. But, as I see it, the rules are there to provide writers and readers, speakers and listeners with the proper tools to engage in a standardized and efficient communicative experience. 

If the powers that be decided that we should capitalize the first word of a sentence, so then gosh darn it, you aren’t going to see me begin a BeingBaumbastic blog post with a lower case letter.  When it comes to following such linguistic principles, I see myself more as a lemming, not a rabble-rouser. Well 98% of the time at least.

 Yet, I have to confess I cannot in good faith support the prohibition of the double negative. In case you need some brushing up, you arrive at a double negative when two negations occur used in the same clause.  The lyrics of one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs ‘Satisfaction’, (I can’t get no….. ) is a classic double negative, and so is the title to that 90s high school comedy Can’t Hardly Wait.  Which, for the record, I watched last week on either TNT or TBS and doesn’t really hold up that well. Ten years later Preston Meyers just comes off as creepy.

Anyway, while double negatives are deemed kosher in some languages, Bishop Robert Lowth pulled a Joseph McCarthy and placed them on English’s grammatical black list way back in the 18^th century called with his book A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes.