Meaning of "No, yes ..."

Language Log has a couple entries on this:

• Yeah No

• “Yeah no” mailbag

• Yet another “yeah no” note

• Yeah No in popular culture

Click through and read. There is no shortage of hypotheses.

I have my own hypothesis to add. I think a lot of people use the word no to mean but seriously…:

A: Where’d you get that jacket?

B: I mugged a leprechaun. No, I’ve had this thing for ages. I don’t really have much to wear with it, it’s so green.

This no has almost no negative connotation at all. It’s just sort of a verbal pivot point.

(Update: This use of no is described at length in Schegloff, Emanuel A., Getting Serious: Joke → Serious ‘no’, Journal of Pragmatics, 2001, vol. 33, no. 12, pp. 1947-1955. You can obtain the PDF here by filling out a little form.)

I think this no gets to be practically subconscious in some people’s speech, and I suspect yeah, no comes from that.

If you state a negative, and I disagree, I may start with "No" to contradict your statement, and then state the positive.

This is related to our general contrariness and bad manners.

It depends on the context. Often people respond first with "no" without thinking, and then realize "yes" might be more appropriate. Maybe you could provide a certain context or quote in order to clarify.

I think what you are often seeing is the person thinking about the question while answering it.

The "no" may just be a verbal pause while the person is thinking through the question but feels that they need to verbalize to prevent that "awkward silence" from happening. It's similar to the drawn out "ahhh", "umm...", "ehhh..." with the difference being that the person that is answering the question is pretty sure the answer is a no, but then they think of possible affirmative answer.

Or it could be a sign that "their light bulb just lit up" and they came to the realization that they actually agree with the questioner or understood what the person was actually saying.