Gossip

For other uses, see Gossip (disambiguation).

Neighborly gossips in the Altstadt in Sindelfingen, Germany

Gossip consists of casual or idle talk of any sort, sometimes (but not always) slanderous and/or devoted to discussing others. Compare backbiting.

While gossip forms one of the oldest and (still) the most common means of spreading and sharing facts and views, it also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information thus transmitted. The term also carries implications that the news so transmitted (usually) has a personal or trivial nature. Compare conversation.

Some people commonly understand gossip as meaning the spreading of rumor and misinformation, as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals. Some newspapers carry "gossip columns" which retail the social and personal lives of celebrities or of élite members of certain communities.

Gossip has recently come into the academy as a fruitful avenue of study, particularly in light of its relationship to both overt and implicit power structures. Compare discourse.

Researchers studying computer networks and distributed computing have recently begun to develop software based on what they term gossip protocols. These mimic social networks as a way to carry out distributed computing tasks that can be hard to solve in other ways. (The term epidemic protocol is also used in this context.)

Etymology

The word "gossip" originates from god-sib, the godparent of one's child or parent of one's godchildren ("god-sibling"; compare the possible cognate of sib: sabhā), referring to a relationship of close friendship. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the usage of godsib back as far as 1014.

The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of gossip in the meaning of "idle talk; trifling or groundless rumour; tittle-tattle ... [e]asy, unrestrained talk or writing, esp. about persons or social incidents" back as far as 1811. This became a primary meaning of the word, although literary as well as everyday English can continue to use gossip in the sense of "talkative woman" (apparently a near-synonym with "godparent" in Early Modern English, the first attestation of the extended meaning of "anyone engaging in familiar or idle talk" dating from 1566). The verb to gossip dates to the early 17th century.

Discredited folk-etymology

Despite the academic etymology, one popular etymology (or folk-etymology) connects the word "gossip" with "to sip": the tale tells how politicians would send assistants to bars to sit and listen to general public conversations. The assistants had instructions to sip a beer and listen to opinions; they responded to the command to "go sip", which allegedly turned into "gossip". (Note the implied value (for power-brokers) that this story attributes to the uninhibited casual opinions and interests of "randomly"-encountered common people — compare opinion-polling and market research.)

Functions of gossip

This Soviet war poster conveys the message: "Don't chatter! Gossiping borders on treason" (1941).

Gossip can serve to:

• normalise and re-inforce moral boundaries in a speech-community
• foster and build a sense of community with shared interests and information
• entertain and divert participants in gossip-sessions
• retail and develop various types of story — anecdotes, narratives and even legends — see memetics
• build structures of social accountability
• further mutual social grooming (like many other uses of language, only more so)
• provide a mating tool that allows (for example) women to mutually identify socially desirable men and compare notes on which men are better than others.

Various views on gossip

Some see gossip as trivial, hurtful and socially and/or intellectually unproductive. The Bahá'í Faith, for instance, refers to gossip as backbiting, and condemns and prohibits the practice, viewing it as a cause of disunity.

In a more sinister interpretation, restrictions on gossip could potentially paralyse the free flow of information and enforce straight-jacketed thinking and censorship in a community. The term "gossip" typically labels discussion the speaker disapproves of ("I discuss, you speculate, he gossips"). Compare freedom of speech.

A feminist definition of gossip presents it as "a way of talking between women, intimate in style, personal and domestic in scope and setting, a female cultural event which springs from and perpetuates the restrictions of the female role, but also gives the comfort of validation." (Jones, 1990:243)

In Early Modern England

In Early Modern England the word "gossip" referred to companions in childbirth, not limited to the midwife. It also became a term for women-friends generally, with no necessary derogatory connotations. It commonly referred to an informal local sorority or social group, who could enforce socially-acceptable behaviour through private censure or through public rituals, such as "rough music" and the skimmington ride. The literature of the period has many references to this, some of them doubtless fictional. In addition, legal records document actions taken by women themselves in the civil courts, and by the church in church courts.

These include accounts of the rituals that shamed or celebrated women’s sexuality: women washing a neighbour’s private parts with soap and water, or ‘polling’ pubic hair. In Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors 1566 a ‘walking mort’ relates how she was forced to agree to meet a man in his barn, but informed his wife. The wife arrived with her “five furious, sturdy, muffled gossips” who catch the errant husband with “his hosen about his legs” and give him a sound beating. The story clearly functions as a morality tale in which the gossips uphold the social order.

• Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0199255989

Gossip in Judaism

Main article: Lashon hara

Judaism considers gossip spoken without a constructive purpose (known in Hebrew as lashon hara) as a sin. Speaking negatively about people, even if retelling true facts, counts as sinful, as it demeans the dignity of man — both the speaker and the subject of the gossip.

According to Proverbs 18:8: "The words of a gossip are like choice morsels: they go down to a man's innermost parts."

Gossip in Islam

Islam considers backbiting the equivalent of eating the flesh of one's dead brother. Backbiting about somebody harms that person without offering any chance of defence for the victim; just as a dead person cannot mount a defence if one were to eat his flesh. Since Islam has the concept of universal brotherhood, one should treat every other man like one's brother.

Gossip in Christianity

Christianity condemns all kinds of gossip. The Epistle to the Romans associates gossips ("backbiters") with a list of sins including sexual immorality and with murder:

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:28-32)

Quotes

• Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

• Gossip, even when it avoids the sexual, bears around it a faint flavor of the erotic. - Patricia Meyer Spacks

See also

• Gossip magazines
• Libel
• Rumor
• Scandal
• Misinformation
• Word of mouth
• Yenta
• Label

Bibliography

• Robert F. Goodman and Aaron Ben-Zeev, editors: Good Gossip. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1993. ISBN 0700606696
• Deborah Jones, 1990: 'Gossip: notes on women's oral culture'. In: Cameron, Deborah. (editor) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London/New York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 242-250. ISBN 0415042593. Cited online in Rash, 1996.
• Felicity Rash, 1996: "Rauhe Männer - Zarte Frauen: Linguistic and Stylistic Aspects of Gender Stereotyping in German Advertising Texts 1949-1959" in The Web Journal of Modern Language Linguistics, Issue 1, 1996. Retrieved from http://wjmll.ncl.ac.uk/issue01/rashb.rtf on 2006-08-11
• Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks. Gossip. New York: Knopf, 1985. ISBN 0394540247
• Robert C. Ellickson (1991). Order without law: how neighbors settle disputes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674641686.

External links

• Ronald de Sousa (U Toronto) on Gossip
• "Go Ahead. Gossip May Be Virtuous" New York Times article by Patricia Cohen 2002-08-10 (requires registration)
• Emrys Westacott (Alfred U) The Ethics of Gossiping
• Perspectives on Gossip The theme of gossip in three literary pieces
• Robin Dunbar, Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans (pre-publication version) "Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences."