In rhetoric, where the role of the interpreter is taken into consideration as a non-negligible factor, negation bears a much wider range of functions and meanings than it does in logic, where the interpretation of signs for negation is constrained by axioms to a few standard options, typically just the classical definition and a few schemes of intuitionism. Recent studies explore the relationship between the representation of the world in the brain and negation, in particular sentential negation.

En linguistique, la négation (du latin , nier) est une opération qui consiste à désigner comme fausse une proposition préalablement exprimée ou non ; elle s’oppose à l’affirmation.