Abstract
This paper aims at investigating the situation of multiple negation in Victorian English from historical and sociolinguistic standpoints. The examples used as the data for this study were collected from ten Victorian novels.
Multiple negation is not common in the Victorian period and it is limited to dialogue. The majority of the examples are of double negation but those of triple negation are found, too. The most typical combination of multiple negation is the one with sentence negators not/-n't or never as the first element and another as the second.
Characters who use multiple negation vary in age, sex and class, but it is mainly uttered by lower-class people, and some lower-class men tend to use the form regularly. Upper-class people sometimes use the form when they are agitated or talk to people familiar to them. A similar tendency is also noted in the lower.
