Doing pragmatics with style: A corpus-pragmatic study of NOT-negation in the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Yulia Hathaway
University of Bergen | Volda University College

Linguistic expressions of negation have been investigated from various perspectives: sociolinguistic variation, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. However, this linguistic phenomenon has received little attention in discourse studies. This corpus-pragmatic case study presents a systematic analysis of the use and functions of NOT-negation in oppositional discourse, specifically in the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Methodologically, it combines a variationist approach and corpus-based discourse analysis. The findings, analyzed through the lens of audience design, reveal that Coates’s use of NOT-negation contributes to a conversational style of writing which can be interpreted as a strategy to maintain a dialogical flow of discourse.

Publication history

Date received: 4 September 2025

Date accepted: 17 September 2025

Published online: 18 December 2025

Table of contents

This paper examines the use of syntactic negation in an oppositional type of discourse, namely discourse on race in the USA. Such a discourse typically presupposes the articulation of alternative lived experience(s) in contrast with the mainstream narrative. The paper presents a systematic analysis of two types of prototypical syntactic negators — not and the contracted enclitic form n’t — and their functions in the writings of a contemporary African American writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975–). Coates has been recognized as “the most important essayist in a generation […] who changed the national political conversation about race” (Fear 2019).

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