Litotes: A double negative is not unimpressive

Harvinder Khetal

In “Bracing for a Trump presidency”, an article on the 2016 US presidential contest published in The Tribune, Harish Khare uses a negative term to emphasise his point: “the world will see America’s rather un-pretty face.” The word ‘un-pretty’ that he prefers evokes a more powerful image than the direct ‘ugly’ would have done. Besides describing the unsightly visage, the expression is also pregnant with a tinge of longing for the opposite, a silent regret for the absence of the pretty face. Especially in the context of the ugly negativity generated by the gutter language of Mr Trump to mock his rivals or the raw nerve hit every time he nonchalantly flings the choicest profanity.

We all, often, take the route of the negative to bring home a feeling, a perspective for a more positive impact. We even use a double negative, for that added force and style. Nobody can claim to have not encountered the double negative “not bad!” instead of the good old plain “good.” In the context of the Hillary-Trump faceoff, let me give that extremely hypothetical example. Imagine Trump blowing his own trumpet to Hillary in a not-so-easy-to-envision magnanimous moment: “I am no ordinary candidate. And you are not too bad yourself!” Sounds more like a Shah Rukh-Kajol moment wisecrack! 

Whatever the setting, it does bring out the efficacy of two negatives. Yeah, so what, you might say. Well, yes, there is hardly anybody who has not encountered such a rhetoric device. But, I bet you did not know that there’s a term for such a figure of speech. It is litotes. This word would ordinarily not be unknown to linguists and literary nerds. Litotes (singular, pronounced LIE-tuh-teez or lie-TOE-teez) is an ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary. It comes from the Greek litos, meaning “simple, plain, meagre.” 

Back to the Hillary-Trump routine. While it would be too much to expect the crass Trump to describe Hillary as “not a bad politician” or Hillary to say that she is “not unhappy” with Trump’s soaring popularity, the expressions “not a bad politician” and “not unhappy” are commonplace. If it’s making your head spin, recall the maths class where you were taught that multiplying two negative numbers makes a positive number. Similarly, in language. And if you don’t excel at math (rather than the biting “you’re terrible” at math), this should simplify the premise:

When Trump says "Eat!", he is encouraging you-know-who to eat (positive).

But when he says "Do not eat!", he is saying the opposite (negative). Now if he says "Do NOT not eat!", he is saying he doesn't want her to starve, so he is back to saying "Eat!" (positive). With two negatives, a litotes takes becomes an understatement. By saying “not bad”, you imply that the thing is less than good; not quite up to the mark, in fact. For you, it would be the alternative to what Trump would probably bitterly mouth as “bullshit”. We often use litotes as a way to expressing criticism while, at the same time, trying to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

Or, it can also be a handy tool to downplaying one’s mistake. Like Hillary Clinton did on being caught on the wrong foot over the email server row. There was a hullabaloo over her storing some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets on an insecure private server which she accessed with an insecure Blackberry that posed a security risk for her term as Secretary of State. Hillary’s defence was a litotes: “It wasn’t my best choice.”

However, not everybody likes litotes. In his essay “Politics and the English Language”, British author George Orwell has expressed his dislike to litotes by mocking its usage.

Well, I am not quite amused by this argument since I am not against litotes. For, but for the litotes, how would Hillary-Trump avoid saying “I am old” by replacing it with “I am not as young as I used to be”? Or, wouldn’t it be nice if our whipping boy Trump were to describe Hillary as “she is not a beauty queen” when he thinks that she is “ugly”? Don’t you like the understatement with a touch of irony? Only someone who is not the sharpest tool in the box (not-so-intelligent person) would disagree with this argument. By the way, there are many more interesting litotes for saying that someone is dumb: not the brightest crayon in the box; not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Wouldn’t life be a bit drab without this literary device?

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