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Why is “not infrequent” not always “frequent”? Double negation in political discourse Cover

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Why is “not infrequent” not always “frequent”? Double negation in political discourse

Volume 3 (2015): Issue 2 (December 2015)

By: Merima Osmankadić

Open Access

|Feb 2017

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to view double negation in the light of its semantic and pragmatic meaning. While double negation in logic gives a positive value, in natural languages, besides having positive entailment, it can have a range of different implicatures and functions. Thus, depending on different discoursal factors, double negation can be used for different motives, e.g. the speaker is not sure whether a certain proposition is true or is sure that it is not true, to name just one. The analysis is carried out on the database consisting of the reports, interviews and articles of the High Representative and his associates in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1995 to 2001.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/exell-2017-0001 | Journal eISSN: 2303-4858

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Language: English

Page range: 40 - 69

Submitted on: Dec 12, 2016

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Accepted on: Dec 16, 2016

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Published online: Feb 8, 2017

Published in print: Dec 1, 2015

Published by: Sciendo

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

division of pragmatic labour,

double negation,

Related subjects:

Linguistics and semiotics,

Applied linguistics,

Language teaching and learning,

Translation studies,

Theoretical frameworks and disciplines,

General linguistics,

Germanic languages,

© 2017 Merima Osmankadić, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 3 (2015): Issue 2 (December 2015)