Yeah! right.

A linguist was explaining how double negatives in various languages mean different things. In English, a double negative is a positive – a construct beloved of lawyers who always seek to obfuscate clarity in the interest of charging higher fees. Can you say “not dispositive”? In Russia, on the other hand, double negatives act to reinforce the negative. If a single negative is bad, a double negative is doubly so. Doubtless a linguistic rule which is especially useful in describing any of their leaders of the past ten centuries or so.

That same linguist then went on to explain, however, that there is no language on earth where a double positive connotes anything other than affirmation.

Then a voice from the back of the hall was heard to say: “Yeah! right.”

And “Yeah! right.” was very much my reaction on reading this sign in Balmy Alley in San Francisco’s Mission District:

“See yourself seeing yourself”

Usual ’60s claptrap designed to part the naïve from their cash, was my reaction. Then I checked out the web site of this business and it actually proves to be anything but pseudo-psychological bull.

Here’s a snippet:

From Outerbody.org.

Given that a knowledge of how others see us is worth a whole lot more than any amount of education, this seems like a pretty clever idea.

Speaking of linguistics, when I was an English schoolboy one of the more charming expressions of enthusiasm, cloaked as it is in the English love of understatement, was “That’s not half bad”. Meaning it’s really awfully good. Outerbody.org’s idea is really not half bad at all.