9 uses
- Women have taken a term that had a negative connotation and made it positive.seven — Language from a State of Change (94% in)
- Instinctively, unless our high-school English teachers crouch over our shoulders, most Americans naturally say It's me, not It is I, they split infinitives, many use double negatives, and they end sentences with prepositions.one — The Language Wars (24% in)
- Some distinctive expressions have been on the rise—for example, the use of weren't for the past tense in negative sentences regardless of subject person or number, such as || weren't me, She weren't home.two — Changing Dialects: Dingbatters Versus Hoi-Toiders (23% in)
- When the issue is viewed another way, as with the effort to find an accent without regional identifiers, most linguists see a bottom-line standard in written American English as the absence of certain grammatical constructions, or "nonstandard" forms such as ain't, double negatives, and subject-verb disagreement.three — Toward a Standard: Putting the "R" in "American" (29% in)
- So that aspect of Southern speech has done a lot to, not do away with the character-—there's still very strong negative caricatures—but that's done away with it a bit.four — This Ain't Your Mama's South Anymore (46% in)
- These negative attitudes find their focus in attacks on minority languages, which are all too obviously badges of ethnicity.five — Hispanic Immigration: Reconquest or Assimilation? (61% in)
- Not only white commentators but middle-class African Americans have often been as negative.six — Bad-mouthing Black English (4% in)
- Since it turns out that people respond similarly to computer-simulated faces and real people, they react negatively when their expectations are crossed.eight — Teaching Computers to Speak American (21% in)
- That may even produce more tolerance and appreciation of the linguistic diversity of this country, and less negative stereotyping of some dialects (such as New York or Southern) as "bad English."eight — Teaching Computers to Speak American (89% in)
There are no more uses of "negative" in Do You Speak American?.
Typical Usage
(best examples)