Phrase “Yeah, No”

Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Mark from York, Pennsylvania.

Hi, Mark. Welcome. How are you doing? Good, good. I’ve noticed a phrase in recent times that catches me off guard.

I hear it when someone is only speaking, never in written form. A person would say, you know, when replying to someone.

So I have two examples for you. The first one is, I believe the sky is always blue.

Yeah, no, this guy is definitely always red.

Or that guy is from San Diego.

Yeah, no, I think he’s really from St. Louis.

Is there a history behind this type of speech?

Yeah, you know, I might argue a little bit with your examples, at least in terms of what I hear, because they don’t really fit the pattern.

Yeah, no, just to be clear, is really common in all the varieties of English that I’ve seen come up in Australian, UK, South African, Canadian, and so forth.

And usually what’s happening there is that you are agreeing with one part of their sentence, but disagreeing with another part.

And so a better example might be, I think that restaurant reservation for 11 p.m. will be fine.

And then the other person says, yeah, no, we should move it to another night.

So they’re agreeing with the fact that they heard me. So they’re just saying, I heard you, I acknowledge you. That’s what the yeah is doing.

And then the no is disagreeing with the content of what I said. And so not always, but usually that’s what’s happening here with the yeah, no.

In your examples, I feel like kind of the reverse was happening. The no was a strong no, and the yeah wasn’t even acknowledging anything at all.

Well, Mark, where did you run across this? Is this the kind of thing that you have in your speech or hear it from colleagues or friends? Where did you get this?

It sounds like I get it from colleagues. I hear colleagues say it occasionally. I try not to say it as much as I can, and I’ve just heard it mainly in speech, just from other podcasts. I don’t hear it on this podcast, but I just hear it in different places.

Mark, does that make sense to you, that it’s okay to say it?

That does make sense. It definitely softens things a little bit instead of a hard yeah or a hard no.

Yeah, I think I would agree with it. But, you know, Mark, I think you raised a really good point when you said that you only hear it orally. I mean, I’ve never seen it written. The only time I’ve seen it written is when it’s a transcript of oral speech.

I don’t. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. Very interesting. Cool.

Thank you so much for your call.

All right.

Thank you very much. Take care now.

Okie doke.

Bye, Mark.

Bye-bye.

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