Forum: musicfans.stackexchange.com
Tags: <lyrics><meaning><pink-floyd>
Title: Is the double negative in 'we don't need no education' intentional?
Question: The famous Pink Floyd Song  Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)  uses double negative in the chorus:   We  don't need no  education     We  dont need no  thought control    ...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZmKbe5oG4  Using double negation in the above lyrics implies that we need both education and thought control.  Is this some mistake they made when writing the lyrics (since this is a really common mistake that a lot of people actually make) or did Pink Floyd used these phrases willingly?

Answers:
sents: text: This is quite certainly intentional.
text: While the double negative used as an intensified negative is considered ungrammatical in "standard" English, it is very common in many English dialects, particularly those associated with lower socioeconomic class levels (see my answer to a similar question in ELU).
text: Song lyrics are typically written in conversational English, not formal English, so non-standard and ungrammatical constructions are more the rule than the exception.
text: Ungrammatical lyrics are often more memorable, and can seem more immediate, intimate and powerful.
text: Compare "
text: Ain't
text: No Mountain High Enough," "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," and "I Don't Wanna Hurt
text: No More," for similar examples.
text: It's also worth noting that the standard English usage of the double negative to mean a positive is rare, because it is confusing, and therefore avoided by most careful speakers.
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/92/Chris Sunami supports Monica
score: 35
sents: text: I've been unable to find any comments directly from Roger Waters (writer of the music and lyrics of the song) on the meaning of those lines.
text: Looking at the lyrics on Genius.com , the annotation for the first line says that if you read it as a double negative, it could mean two different things
text: "We do need education"—A call for education
text: "We don't need this type of education"—A stab at the education
text: the children are getting Personally, I'd be inclined to disagree with this assessment.
text: I've always thought that it was just slang for "We don't need education", for a few reasons.
text: First, if you remember the second time they sing through the verse, it's just a bunch of kids singing it; "we don't need no" is absolutely something a school age working class kid with a Cockney accent in England in the 70s might say instead of
text: "we need no"
text: or "we don't need".
text: Second, either potential meaning of the double negative doesn't really make sense for the second line.
text: "We need thoughts control"?
text: "We don't need this type of thoughts control"?
text: Neither of those make sense, at least to me.
text: And if the second line is not a double negative, then why would the first one be?
text: Furthermore, do children need "dark sarcasm in the classroom"?
text: I don't think so either.
text: Third, the whole song is a rebellion against the school, and when "Another Brick In the Wall" plays in
text: The Wall film , Pink has a day dream of the children chanting "we don't need no education", destroying the school building with sledgehammers and crowbars, setting it on fire, and dragging the teachers out kicking and screaming.
text: To me, this doesn't say "we need education" or "we need a different type of education", it says "we don't need education at all".
text: I don't know if the call for alternative education is even something a kid of that age would think of; school is the way that it is and Pink hates it.
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/431/Joe Kennedy
score: 16
sents: text: For some reason, I was thinking about education while making a songand Pink Floyd song came to my mind.
text: Try to sing: We do need an education It doesn't sound as good as.
text: We don't need no education
text: is packs a punch and is more provocative Sometimes when you make a song, the melody doesn't fit the words and sometimes the words don't fit the melody, so you have to rearrange and find words to fit the melody or make a compromise.
text: That's why a song can be want you want to hear or not what you want to hear.
text: And we DO need an education.
text: Otherwise we will be left behind those who chose to get an education.
text: P.S.
text: Very interesting thoughts
text: you came up with by the way
text: , I'm just another "besserwisser"
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/1885/paulsky
score: 3
sents: text: 'We dont need no...' is commonly used in London for 'we don't need any'.
text: its simple.
text: Note that the lyric is not 'we don't need no learning'.
text: The point is that an inner city London school in the 70s was often not about learning but about 'schooling'
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/2067/user2067
score: 3
sents: text: Maybe it's just omitted punctuation in the lyrics readable form (we don't need, no, education /
text: we don't need -no!- thought control), as emphasazing the negative statement.
text: That also makes sense rhythmically
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/3656/Jose
score: 1
sents: text: Anyone who's lived in London where they speak Cockney, as in this song, knows very well that "we don't need no" means we don't need any.
text: I grew up there, so seeing all these questions and analysis is actually quite funny.
text: No Londoner would ever ask this question.
answer_details: author: musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/5518/John
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
This is intentional, and is a common way of saying "we don't need any…" among Cockney speakers in London.
The use of London and Cockney slang in the song conferms the intentional use of the double negative.