I came across this title of an article in a scholarly journal: "Minimizing Disincentives for Collaborative Research." Now, I couldn't help but think that something like: "Providing Incentives for Collaborative Research" would be better. If you minimize disincentives, aren't you then providing incentives? The disincentives discussed were: increased time needed for communication; lack of clarity regarding leadership; need to share resources and revenue; and problems when partners don't fulfill their requirements. The answers to all of those (i.e. providing more time for communication) would be incentives, right?

Or, does the use of double negatives communicate something different to you?

Well I suppose you could say that "minimise disincentives" means that there are things standing in the way that you should get rid of while "providing incentives" means that there is nothing actually standing in the way but encouragement is needed.

You could say it but I wouldn't. Sometimes a double negative can provide a shade of meaning that isn't expressed by the positive equivalent (not bad doesn't mean the same to me as good, for example) but I don't think that's the case in this example.

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In slightly less jargon-ridden prose, "minimising disincentives" means something like "reducing the negative points", which is not the same thing at all as "providing incentives".

We've spoken of this previously and I think we agreed that the double negative is one of the devices that might be more commonly used in UK English. This is because it is a way of providing that subtlety of meaning for which UK English is so famed.

For example, were I to say the "...It is not uncommon to use a double negative in UK English..." to us, in the UK, that would have a quite different shade of meaning from "...It is common to use a double negative in UK English..."

I those of you reading this in the USA cannot appreciate this distinction, then this might be why British diplomacy is considered by many to be of such a high order.

Richard English

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Sometimes a double negative can provide a shade of meaning that isn't expressed by the positive equivalent (not bad doesn't mean the same to me as good, for example) but I don't think that's the case in this example.

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Is 'not bad' really a double negative though? A double negative to me is something like "ain't got none".

My Mom: "Well, if you aint got none, then you must have some!"


'Not bad' is different I think.

In a linguistic sense, ain't got none is not a double negative. There's only one level of negation. Positive: got some, negative ain't got none. For this reason some linguists prefer to call it spread negative. It's the standard form of negation in languages like Italian and Czech and dialects like Cockney and AAVE.

Actual double negation, that is negation of negation, occurs in common English expressions like not uncommon. Psycholinguistic tests show these are harder to process than the positive version. But they mean different thing: not uncommon clearly includes some middle ground, it doesn't just mean common.

At first, in my example, I agreed with arnie. Okay, if you're just reducing the negative points, as arnie says, then you're not providing anything. But, in fact, you are providing something if you consider their examples. You are providing for better communication or for clearer leadership, etc. In this case, I think the use of the double negative merely confuses the reader and is done for the look of eruditeness. Having written exams for a number of years, as aput says, the research is clear that double negatives are harder for students to understand.

I don't think, Richard, that UK English is more subtle than US English. I can see a subtle difference between "common" and "not uncommon." In some cases, though, I think double negatives confuse the message and are used for dubious reasons.

I don't entirely disagree with you but I can't say I entirely agree with you either.

Richard English