An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
Have you run across a reference that traces this story? Because you get everything from joke, funny story about the person to true story about the person. In seemingly endless circular reference.
funny but just in case anyone takes it literally, "yeah, right" requires some contextual indication of sarcasm to be negative. The same words could be uttered as an expression of impatient agreement rather than disagreement, and most positives can be turned negative with additional context.
This is different from the English double negative which is an application of context-free logic to a statement.
Indeed. This joke doesn't really work written down- it's absolutely possible to say "yeah, right" in an entirely positive way. It's the sarcastic tone when spoken that makes it negative.
The one item I've seen attributing this to a named person, attributed it to a philosophy professor at CCNY. This was in "The Lives They Led" year-end collection of obituaries the NY Times publishes, and it was probably at least five years ago.
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."