'Irregardless' and the Double Negative

In our last class, we read an article on the use of the word(?) ‘irregardless,’ which proved to be quite controversial.  While most students acknowledged that it is in fairly common use and that it is generally understandable in context, its use made most of the class uncomfortable and there was significant disagreement over its status as a ‘real word’.  The main reason people cited was that the word is illogical: it contains a double negative (the morpheme ir-, meaning ‘not,’ and -less, meaning without) which should cancel out.  In other words, it should be an antonym rather than a synonym for ‘regardless.’  I too find the notion of double-negatives being used for negation rather disconcerting, but I disagree that this is objectively illogical or that it delegitimizes the language.

This past summer, I went to Tajikistan on a scholarship program to study Persian.  I had no background in Persian language, and many aspects of it surprised me: phonetics ([q]? [ʁ]? what are these?), phonology (how do you put a glottal stop before an alveolar trill? or immediately after a nasal?), syntax (Subject-Object-Verb? That for me difficult is!).  But one of the most interesting surprises was the discovery that double negatives were the norm for Persian negation.  While many educated Americans disdain the practice, it is standard even in the great works of Persian literature.  For instance, here’s the most popular poem in Tajikistan, which every Tajik I met seemed to know (Tajik Persian uses Cyrillic orthography, which is why it looks more like Russian than Farsi):

Ҳеҷ шодӣ нест андар ин ҷаҳон         [hed͡ʒ ʃodi nest andar in d͡ʒahon]

Бартар аз дидори рӯйи дӯстон         [bartar az didori rɵi dɵston]

Ҳеҷ талхӣ нест дар дил талхтар [hed͡ʒ talχi nest dar dil talχtar]

Аз фироқи дӯстони пурҳунар          [az firoqi dɵstoni purhunar]

This translates to “there ain’t no happiness in this world / better than seeing the face of a friend / there ain’t nothing more bitter in the heart / than the separation of close friends.”  There are two things I would like to note about this.  First, double negatives are not exclusive to uneducated corruptors of language, but are seen in Persian (and many other languages) in both literature and everyday conversation.  The second, and perhaps more significant point, is that you probably understood what Rudaki, the poet, was saying without a problem despite the fact that I retained the double negative in my translation.  While “ain’t,” like “irregardless,” is often frowned upon in polite society, it remains a word whose meaning most native English speakers understand despite its often illogical-seeming context.  In fact, double negation, considered perfectly logical in many languages, has a long history in English as well.  Chaucer used double and even triple negatives in Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare used a few in his plays, and they remain in use among speakers of African-American Vernacular English and some other English dialects to this day.  As frustrating as it may seem to accept “irregardless” as an English word, one has to remember that descriptive linguists can’t reject no words based on the rules of mathematical logic or the socioeconomic status of its speakers if those words are indeed in widespread use.  And if you could care less about the opinion of descriptive linguists, be sure not to think too hard about the logic of the first clause of this sentence, which contains an expression that many General American English speakers don’t think twice about.