“Yeah, no…”

Not necessarily isolated to footballers, but interviewees in general over the past few years have begun to answer every question with “that’s a great question”.

It’s a communication and personal engagement device that is taught in rhetoric and relations courses and via consultancy and it does my head in.

Every single question is not going to be “great” and when you say it every fucking time you respond you just sound like a disingenuous ****.

Someone awhile ago did a compilation of interviewees on various BBC programmes doing that was 3 minutes long, and it was just from
The past year.
 
Nearly every footballer now starts every single answer to every single question with this stupid phrasing.

“You played well today Jack”.

“Yeah, no, I’m pleased with how it’s going”.

“Are you happy with a draw Ryan?”

“Yeah, no, the lads put a shift in”

It drives me up the wall. It came out of nowhere about two years ago and now it’s everywhere. How can both yes and no be applicable to the same opinion?
No yes?
Or as the vicar of dibbley would have it: yes, yes, yes, yes, no.
 
Not necessarily isolated to footballers, but interviewees in general over the past few years have begun to answer every question with “that’s a great question”.

It’s a communication and personal engagement device that is taught in rhetoric and relations courses and via consultancy and it does my head in.

Every single question is not going to be “great” and when you say it every fucking time you respond you just sound like a disingenuous ****.

Someone awhile ago did a compilation of interviewees on various BBC programmes doing that was 3 minutes long, and it was just from
The past year.
I had an online training course at work this week, maybe 8 or 9 of us and the trainer and every question asked was indeed 'a great question'.
When she* asked at the end if any of us had any questions, I was dying to ask her which of the ''great questions'' asked did she think was 'the greatest'.

* I say she, we were all asked to identify which pronoun we preferred to be called and a few did say 'they', can't recall which she / they stated.
 
Nearly every footballer now starts every single answer to every single question with this stupid phrasing.

“You played well today Jack”.

“Yeah, no, I’m pleased with how it’s going”.

“Are you happy with a draw Ryan?”

“Yeah, no, the lads put a shift in”

It drives me up the wall. It came out of nowhere about two years ago and now it’s everywhere. How can both yes and no be applicable to the same opinion?
Agree, very irritating. People starting their answer to a question with 'so' a few years ago was equally annoying. You even heard it on radio 4. I haven't heard that for a while now, probably because I haven't had the radio on.
 
This is definitely not even close to being a new thing - as demonstrated by this article from 2004 which specifically talks about footballers being interviewed using the exact same phrasing:


Most sources seem to date this phenomena as being from the 90s - originated by people who are now in their 50s.

Other languages have exactly the same devices - as the article says "ja, nein" is used in Germany, and "ya nay" in South Africa.

You are taking a phrase which conveys quite a specific meaning and trying to break it down into constituent linguistic parts which mean something entirely different. That's not really how language works. Combinations of words rarely mean the same thing as the simple addition of their individual constituents.

In context "yeah, no" is a way of showing agreement with the interviewer while also coming across as humble. That should be quite obvious from the examples you gave yourself.
I agree with this, a lot of the time you hear this, the presenter asks the question and sometimes adds a little quip at the end, to which the person jokingly goes along with the quip, before correcting him / herself with the true reply
 

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.