“Yes” and “yeah” mean agreement and “no” means disagreement; correct? Yeah, no, kind of… In this article, Sarah Grieves uses the Spoken British National Corpus to explore the different ways “Yes no” and “Yeah no” can be used in speech. Sarah is a language researcher interested in spoken English, language and gender, and learner English. Previously she was part of the Alexa team at Amazon, working to improve automated understanding of spoken language.
In August, scientist and writer Richard Dawkins tweeted:
Words for agreeing and disagreeing are some of the very first things that are typically taught in a language. However, as Richard Dawkins points out in his tweet, in spoken British English agreement and disagreement words can actually be used together to achieve some interesting outcomes.
Firstly, it’s important to note that we usually see “yeah no” rather than “yes no”. This is because “yeah” is over 9 times more common than “yes” in spoken British English.
Here are 8 of the ways the “yeah no” construction can be used, with examples from the Spoken British National Corpus
1. Agreeing
“Yeah no” can be used to show that the speaker understands and agrees with their interlocutor:
Speaker 1: I usually […] find someone and then they move to Italy or something
Speaker 2: yeah no well that’s it
Speaker 1: it’s really annoying
2. Disagreeing
Conversely, the two parts of the phrase can function separately. Here the “yeah” signals understanding, but the “no” is used I the conventional way to disagree:
Speaker 1: they can be in the Skype videos
Speaker 2: in the background
Speaker 1: yeah no in the foreground I don’t wanna see you
Speaker 2: rude
3. Partially disagreeing
Sometimes, speakers use “yeah no” to show that they have some issue with the previous statement, but without disagreeing fully. In the example below, Speaker 2 is using “yeah no” as a politeness strategy, to indicate that they think Speaker 1 is correct, but that they’re talking about something different:
Speaker 1: no you can get them. I think you can yeah
Speaker 2: yeah no I just meant um cos I had a short wave one and and I don’t know if this one is short wave
4. Showing you’re listening
Spoken English has lots of ways to indicate that you are listening and acknowledging what the speaker has said, such as “yeah” or “mm-hmm”. These also help to make conversation flow smoothly by filling gaps. In the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 we find examples of “yeah no” functioning like this:
Speaker 1: it might have just gone off you know for a minute
Speaker 2: yeah no
Speaker 1: reconnected
Speaker 1: just you know I’m only down the road I can just nip to the shop and
Speaker 2: yeah no thank you
5. Introducing a new idea
“Yeah no” can also be used as a conversational strategy to introduce a new idea or topic:
Speaker 1: it is […] yeah no but the the biggest thing is that the the stones are Welsh and they come from er Pembrokeshire or something isn’t it?
6. Showing enthusiasm/emphasising
“Yeah no” can be used for emphasis, and to show how enthusiastic you are about something:
Speaker 1: so this would be good yeah no that is spot on
7. Hedging/hesitation
As Richard Dawkins points out, “yeah no” is “apparently self-contradictory”. Sometimes speakers use this contradiction deliberately, saying “yeah no” as a filler when they are hesitating about their response, or to indicate that their answer is complex:
Speaker 1: well I think you look really good
Speaker 2: yeah no I’m yeah I’m doing alright
Speaker 1: Scotland seems like a way much better country
Speaker 2: yeah no in some ways
8. Clarifying
Sometimes a speaker wants to go back to something they’ve said, and clarify an element to make sure their listeners understand. “Yeah no” can be used to signal a clarification of an earlier point:
Speaker 1: like yeah no I’m not saying violence like I’m not
Frequency
While you may hear all of these uses of “yeah no” in spoken British English, they don’t all occur equally frequently. In the Spoken British National Corpus we find that around 35% of cases are showing agreement, and a further 23% function as discourse markers. The other uses of “yeah no” are much less frequent:
So, if someone says “yeah no” to you, it’s more likely that they’re agreeing with you than disagreeing!
Ideas for teaching
Warm-up activity:
Ask your class if there’s a similar feature in other languages they speak (an agreement word followed by a disagreement word, or vice versa). Get them to tell a partner whether it can be used in any of the ways mentioned above. Can it be used in writing, or only in speech?
Outside the classroom:
Ask your students to notice this expression outside of the classroom. English-language comedies are a great place to find examples of this! If they live in a place where English is widely spoken, see if they can hear others using this phrase in conversation, and get them to listen for its meaning.
Discover more about Corpus research.