Will Wilkinson pointed this phenomenon out to me a couple of months ago, and now, like a man who’s just finished a particularly compelling conspiracy novel, I’m seeing it everywhere: The use in casual conversation of totally superfluous negations in the process of affirming something. I’m talking about things like:

GUY 1: You’re coming tomorrow night, right?

GUY 2: Yeah, no, I’ll be there.

It looks silly in print, but listen up. You’ll realize that people actually do this all the time. There are, of course, totally legit uses of that construction, as in:

GUY 1: That wasn’t a very good idea.

GUY 2: Yeah, no it wasn’t.

But it doesn’t seem like that’s usually how it’s used. So what, at the risk of sounding Seinfeldian, is up with that? Any cunning linguists out there have a theory? Neal, I’m looking at you.