What does "This ain't no place for no hero" mean? It's a phrase from the song "Short Change Hero", and while I think I understand it (This is not a place for people who are not heroes), I find somewhat confusing the combination of all those negations; "ain't" is "is not", so you may read it as "This is not no place for no hero", which doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense.
Then the song continues with
This ain't no place for no better man
Again with the negations and this "no better man", that looks strange. I've seen it in phrases like e.g. "there's no better man for the job", but what's the meaning here exactly?
Finally, can those phrases be considered correct English, or did the songwriter take some licenses to make them fit the song?
Best Answer
Most of the time, especially in "vernacular" speech, multiple negations are not intended to be interpreted sequentially, but rather as an intensified single negative.
The phrase "This ain't no place for no hero", in normal speech, would be "this is no place for a hero." The additional negations intensify it, leading to a sense more like "This is absolutely not a place for a hero."
Similarly, "This ain't no place for no better man" means "This is not a place for a better man."
These sorts of multiple-negation phrases are absolutely NOT considered correct, standard, grammatical English, but are common vernacular.