This paper examines a recent attempt to provide a negative answer to the question of the existence of illocutionary negations. It argues that the attempt is unsuccessful both because it presupposes a misinterpretation of the question's theoretical import and because, even granting that misinterpretation, it bases its proposed answer on certain assumptions that can independently be shown to be untenable.

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation within pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphonic theory), the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation, lowering and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of the relevance of negative utterance is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on the so-called invited inference) is proposed and tested (...) for the main uses of negation discussed in the paper. (shrink)