Psychology of Gossip

Studies in Victorian literature have tended to regard gossip as a form of social talk without considering its significance as a social interaction that communicates information in fictional societies. This article takes a different approach and examines the novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, as a case study. Using contemporary research on the sociology of gossip, rumours, legends and scandal, it attempts to understand the function and importance of these various forms of social judgement utilized by Thomas Hardy in his novel. This paper argues that the informal circuitries of information greatly influence the plot and Tess's decisions and eventually lead to her tragedy. Furthermore, this study of gossip in fiction adds to the existing literary criticism of novels in Victorian literature, and prompts that gossip's unacknowledged and varied role in literature should be assessed in future research.

Gamit ang ilang halimbawa mula sakasaysayan ng Pilipinas, susuriin ng papel ang tsismis bilang instrumento ng kapangyarihan. Ang kahulugan, katangian at silbi ng tsismis ay tatalakayin sa unang bahagi ng papel. Sa ikalawang bahagi, bibigyang-pansin ang kakayahan ng tsismis bilang kasangkapan ng kapangyarihan. Sa ikatlong bahagi, ilalatag kung paano ito kinakasangkapan ng pribilehiyadong uri sa pagsusulong ng kanilang interes at ng mga nasa laylayan para banggain ang dominanteng sistema sa lipunan. Panghuli, sa pamamagitan ng mga kasalukuyang mga usapin, masisipat ang patuloy na tunggalian sa mga uring ito upang patunayan ang politika ng wikang bitbit ng tsismis.

Despite the fact that many of us participate in it daily, gossip has
received virtually no philosophical scrutiny. In this paper, I provide a
working definition of gossip, consider briefly the reasons why one gossips, and then turn to an assessment of the moral aspects of gossiping. While there are some good consequentalist reasons against gossiping in certain cases, the stronger considerations against gossip come primarily from the realm of virtue ethics. The necessary exclusion of the person being gossiped about from the conversation .raises serious questions about respect for that person. Moreover, the predominantly negative character of the evaluations given in gossip is good reason for being suspicious of the character of the gossiper, especially of the habitual gossiper. Magnaminity, fairness, and compassion seem to be some of the virtues which are usually absent from gossip; mean-spiritedness, an unjustified sense of moral superiority, and ill-will toward those being gossiped about seem to be frequently associated with gossip.

This essay considers the significance of rumor in the work of Thomas Hardy, anchoring its claims in a reading of Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). I argue that rumor conditions the narrative movement of this novel through its linked operations in social space and bodily sensation. First, I examine the relationship between the movements of characters and their attendant social reputations, tracking the way in which hearsay and opinion intersect narrative spaces in the novel. I then move to the level of internal, bodily registration—to the physiology and sensation of rumor—and investigate its wide-ranging visual and aural manifestations. I emphasize here how bodily awareness provides rumor with a domain where it can forge the verifiability it constitutively lacks in the realm of social knowledge. Finally, I turn to attacks on character and name, invoking comparisons with Hardy's poetry and suggesting that even external indexes of social presentation come to be felt within the contours of bodily sensation, further expanding the scope and narrative pressure of hearsay. I conclude by outlining the wider interest of rumor as a category for thinking about the representation of moral psychology in novels and for evaluating the varieties of evidence at work in novels and criticism.

This is a multi-faceted corpus study of the adverbs of frequency 'always' and 'never', in which their meanings (exaggerated or literal), tense-aspect preferences, and functions (specifically, the function of always or never followed by the progressive) across genres are all investigated. I also
briefly investigate the maximizers 'utterly', 'completely', 'totally', and 'fully'. Using four corpora and quantitative and qualitative methods, I show that 'always' and 'never' are not as straightforward as they appear. On the contrary, their distribution, meaning, and use are highly dependent on
context, both in a larger sense (i.e., genre, pragmatic concerns) and a more specific, local sense (i.e., the immediate linguistic environment, including the verbs, tense-aspect, etc.). For example, I argue that concerns about accountability explain the observed rates of exaggeration across different types of news articles and across academic journals in different fields, and that social concerns involving politeness explain the finding that the grammatical subject in complaints is more often third person than second person. Throughout, it is shown that a cognitive-functional approach is the most useful for understanding how these very common words are used.

In this paper, I explored how to research a sensitive topic such as gossip in organizations and used a narrative approach to illustrate the methodological and ethical issues that come up when considering a variety of research methods. I first attempted to conduct an ethnographic research on a project group from a Dutch university undergoing a major change. At the very beginning of the project, as a participant observer, I struggled to remain an outsider, or a “fly on the wall.” But as issues of power came into play and access became increasingly problematic, I moved towards the role of an “observing participant.” Therefore, in order to research gossip and some of the hidden dimensions of organizational life, I turned to auto- and self-ethnography as a way to regain access and greater authenticity. While following this route presented its share of ethical and methodological issues, it also provided valuable insights that could be of value to researchers attempting to study sensitive topics such as gossip in organizations.

Workplace gossip is a widespread phenomenon around the world. Nevertheless, organizational literature has paid little attention to gossip and management research surrounding gossip is scarce. Furthermore, almost always, in this field of study, the term “gossip” has negative connotations. However gossip can be an organizational phenomenon both positive and negative at the same time, depending on whether one is viewing the gossip from the employee’s perspective or the organization’s perspective.
The aim of this paper is to present some positive applications of gossip, and to provide managers  with a deeper  understanding of the various functions gossip serves within organizations, in order to reduce specifics costs, improve coordination and control mechanism, and finally provide other benefits.

Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression.

“Goebel's book is a carefully crafted examination of how talk mediates social relations in the context of ethnic diversity…. A strength of Goebel's approach is his effort to take into account historical perspectives captured in language ideologies….For those interested in considering broader sociological patterns Goebel's meticulous data are a rich and exciting resource…. Goebel notes in the book's preface that his work is not an easy read …. For those interested in tracing the role of language in on–the–ground processes of ethnic identification in a situation of diversity, however, the book is well worth the effort.” Nancy Smith-Hefner, Boston University. (Anthropological Linguistics, 54/1: 97-100)

This book is of interest to anyone concerned with identity formation, space, and the nation, and sets an important methodological example for how to study the role of language practices in demarcating space.” Sheri Gibbings, WilfrId Laurier University. (Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 167/4: 561-598)

"Goebel presents a richly detailed description of language variation in two wards of Semarang…This multidisciplinary work has implications for many fields.” Ellen Rafferty, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Asian Studies Review, 35/3: 419-420)

“Goebel has written a very stimulating book that significantly enriches our knowledge of the relationships between national and regional languages in Java.” Edwin Wieringa, University of Cologne. (Anthropos, 107/1: 257)

“The book’s strength is its careful identification of moments of talk during which interlocutors co-create and delimit the linguistic and cultural practices that form a positive neighborhood identity and often simultaneously work to exclude neighbors.” Christina Casey, Old Dominion University. (Anthropology and Humanism, 38/2: 209-211)

To cite this article: Mpho M. Pheko (2018): Rumors and gossip as tools of social undermining and social dominance in workplace bullying and mobbing practices: a closer look at perceived perpetrator motives, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment,

Cross-culturally, dead are protected from posthumous negative evaluations by the universal “nil nisi bonum” precept that governs the ethics within the community of mourners. In this study, we set out to test the observance of this injunction against posthumous gossiping in the Romanian public deathscape. Obituaries and other posthumous articles (N = 1,148) were collected that covered the deaths of 63 celebrities who passed away between 2013 and 2016. Materials were gathered from the digital archives of three Romanian news sources (a news agency, a “quality” newspaper, and a tabloid), published one week after the moment of death. The findings show that 22% of the articles do contain negative evaluations of the deceased. The percentage rises to 36.4% if we restrict the sample to only those celebrities with a controversial anthumous reputation (19 of 63). These results indicate that celebrities are not spared from critical assessments after they pass away.

In this roundtable discussion, Nicholas Baer and Maggie Hennefeld gather six distinguished thinkers to help us understand rumors, gossip, and the broader allure and danger of unverified information. Indeterminate, often-illegitimate beliefs and truth-claims have been a topic of enduring fascination for scholars of media and culture, gaining new urgency with the viral spread of fake news via social media and the attacks on scientific knowledge amid the Covid pandemic and climate crisis.

Gossiping is ubiquitous in social life. In every imaginable corner of society, people from all walks of life are gossiping their living acquaintances. But what happens when the " third party, " i.e., the subject of gossip, is absent par excellence, not only temporarily and spatially, but definitively? Do people continue to gossip their dead acquaintances? What is the fate of gossip after its target dies? These are the questions this paper sets out to address. In doing so, it develops a non-reductionist sequential model of death as a social process in which biological death is only the starting point of the bio-social phenomenon of dying. Building on some classic anthropological theories and concepts taken from Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, the paper examines the post-mortem status of gossip in terms of the unfolding sequence of the funeral ritual in a particular Romanian cultural context. It argues that during the liminal phase covering the deathwatch and the burial, a transient " gossipless communitas " emerges around the dead one governed by the taboo against gossiping. If the dead is afterward spared from post-mortem gossip, this is due mainly to the impracticality of gossip. The paper ends by arguing that death, despite the emotional distress caused to the surviving family, brings about a reputational bless for the deceased. It does so since, under the normative jurisdiction of the saying " De mortuis nihil nisi bonum " (Of the dead, nothing unless good), the memory of the deceased is being posthumously dignified.

What constitutes a conspiracy, and what are the stakes of popular theories of conspiracy? This article addresses these questions through an ethno-historical examination of narratives about conspiracies endured and posited by Cuban people. Long before the Revolution in 1959, continuing through the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, and onward to recent claims of biological warfare orchestrated by the government of the US, conspiracy theories have circulated widely in Cuba and its diasporic enclaves. Drawing on ethnographic and historical data, the article embeds present-day narratives of conspiracy in the longer-run history of Cuban conspiracy theories such as those initially presented in the case of the USS Maine and its nineteenth-century precursors, notably including the stationing of the HMS Romney in Havana harbour, and the so-called conspiracy of La Escalera in 1844. It argues, ultimately, that these tales are always morality tales, counterposing nefarious agents of an illegitimate external power to the imagined community of those (including the narrator's self and audience) thus disenfranchised. In that sense, then, the truth value of any particular account of conspiracy is irrelevant to the larger truth of Empire.

Queda claro que cuando se habla del nuevo coronavirus hay más dudas que certezas. Se sabe que la enfermedad se contagia con gran facilidad y rapidez; que, a pesar de que hay gente asintomática que no requiere hospitalización, también existe un alto riesgo de terminar en terapia intensiva y, peor aún, en el cementerio. Pero las dudas se incrementan sobre las múltiples formas del contagio del SARS-CoV 2. Todos los días se difunde nueva información sobre las mutaciones y la propagación de este coronavirus y sus indescifrables formas de contagio. Por ejemplo, si antes se descartaba que el virus se podía propagar a través del aire, ahora se ha puesto en duda esta información y se habla del contagio a través de aerosoles. Vivimos una época de alta hiperconectividad y, por supuesto, tiene grandes ventajas para allegarse información relevante. Pero en esta situación tiene también algunas desventajas, por ejemplo, en la red virtual hay un exceso de información que ha generado una constante ambivalencia con respecto al contagio de la Covid-19. La información fidedigna o generada desde la ciencia epidemiológica y la medicina no siempre es la que tiene una mayor difusión y aceptación en las redes sociales y en distintas aplicaciones digitales. Además, como ya se ha dicho, esta información científica no es concluyente; los conocimientos sobre el nuevo coronavirus se van actualizando constantemente. Por lo tanto, cuando aparece información sin referencia a la ciencia y que asegura resolver una duda con respecto al contagio, se vuelve mucho más contagiosa que la que se difunde de manera oficial. La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) alertó de una "infodemia" y en su página oficial ha dedicado una sección para desmentir una serie de noticias e información sobre curas y formas de contagio que se han propagado a través de la red: https://www.who.int/es/news-room/commentaries/detail/coronavirus-infodemic No es la primera vez que las fake news se adelantan en descubrir los enigmas de un contagio o de anunciar medicamentos de una enfermedad incurable. La epidemia de rumores también se propagó con el VIH y con la gripe A-H1N1. Las variables han sido las mismas: las dudas en torno a un peligro de contagio de una nueva enfermedad que atenta contra la vida de los seres humanos desencadenan una propagación de creencias para evitar dicho contagio. Se supone que al estar bien informados los rumores no se propagarían. Pero precisamente este es el problema: ¿qué quiere decir estar bien informado? En la portada de los periódicos digitales, es común encontrar información que podría considerarse contradictoria. Por un lado, los medios oficiales de un país pueden asegurar que ya estará lista la vacuna para evitar el contagio del nuevo coronavirus en tan solo unos meses y, a un lado de esta noticia, la OMS alerta de que no existe evidencia alguna de que la vacuna esté lista para finales del 2020. Esta ambigüedad garantiza que las fake news seguirán inundando las redes digitales.

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la ideología sobre el lenguaje de la mujer, según se refleja en los tratados de los moralistas españoles de la Edad Moderna. Comenzamos prestando atención a las actitudes y creencias sobre el silencio y la palabra heredadas de la tradición bíblica, para repasar a continuación los estereotipos del habla femenina y su censura y estigmatización en las obras de los tratadistas. Cuando otras formas más directas de poder y control sobre la propia vida no están a su alcance, la mujer encuentra en el lenguaje una herramienta esencial para progresar o proteger sus propios intereses. La participación de la mujer en la vida de la comunidad, con sus comentarios, críticas, acusaciones y murmuraciones, constituye una actuación lingüística con posibilidad de erosionar las estructuras patriarcales de la sociedad y da lugar al gran recelo y la inquietud que estas obras ponen de manifiesto.

From a sociological perspective, the fundamental elements necessary for speech to be considered gossip are “face-to-face” evaluative communication between/among persons about an absent third party. Given that Paul was not present when the Galatians—and the “agitators” with them—experienced the initial audition of the epistle via Paul's surrogate, this project will consider the text through the lens of social-semiotics and performance, as well as honor-shame, to underscore why Paul gossips, how he does it, and the risks he takes doing so. It is hoped that some light will be shed on the complex intersection between scribality, orality, performance, and honor when considering the Incident at Antioch, the situation in the Galatian congregations, and Paul's determination to carry on westward with his gospel. I will suggest that Paul's recollection of his altercation with Peter in Antioch at Galatians 2:11-14 amounting to agonistic “epistolary gossip,” constitutes a public cha...

Review of Chad Bennett's critical book, Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry, which treats the poetries of Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, and James Merrill.

(And more briefly, Juliana Spahr, John Keene, Eileen Myles, and D.A. Powell.)

Gossip is a more complicated and socially important phenomenon than most people think, and campaigns to stamp out gossip in workplaces and other social settings overlook the fact that gossip is part of human nature and an essential part of what makes social groups function as well as they do. This chapter takes the position that gossip is an evolutionary adaptation and that it is the primary tool for monitoring and managing the reputation of individuals in society. An interest in the affairs of other people is a necessary component of being a socially competent person, and the chapter explores the multi-dimensional nature of gossip-related social skills. It pays special attention to “gossip as a social skill,” rather than as a character flaw, and presents insights into related phenomena such as how people use social media such as Facebook.

El refranero de la Edad Moderna proporciona una vía de entrada a las ideas que se consideran en este tiempo verdades inapelables, universales y fijas en lo que respecta al lenguaje de la mujer. La visión que ofrecen reitera los conceptos de otros textos contemporáneos, en especial los tratados de los moralistas dedicados a la educación de la mujer. En ambos corpus se repiten las advertencias sobre los peligros que encierra el habla de la mujer y las críticas a los tipos de discurso que le son característicos. Cuando, como en la Edad Moderna, la participación directa en la vida pública está fuera de su alcance, la mujer encuentra en el lenguaje su más natural y accesible instrumento de cambio y control social. Los estereotipos negativos y la desconfianza de la voz femenina que trasmiten nuestros refranes puede entenderse como una reacción defensiva frente a la erosión de las estructuras patriarcales asociada con el habla de la mujer –controlar el habla de la mujer es controlar su participación en la vida pública, y esto es lo que realmente inquieta a la sociedad patriarcal.

Titre : « Le recueil de proverbes et le langage des femmes dans les Temps modernes en Espagne ». Le refranero, le recueil de proverbes, des Temps modernes, nous offre une porte d'entrée aux idées qui sont considérées, de nos jours, comme des vérités sans appel, universelles et stables en ce qui concerne le langage des femmes. Ces proverbes nous montrent aussi toutes les pensées de la même manière que les autres textes contemporains, en particulier, les traités des moralistes consacrés à l'éducation des femmes. Dans les deux corpus, les critiques et les mises en garde sur les dangers du discours féminin et sur les types de discours qui lui sont propres se répètent. Lorsque, comme dans l'époque moderne, la femme ne peut que se maintenir loin de la vie publique, c'est le moment où les femmes trouvent dans le langage leur instrument de changement et de contrôle social le plus naturel et accessible. Les stéréotypes négatifs et la méfiance de la voix féminine recueillis dans nos refranes peuvent être considérés comme une forme de défense face à l'érosion des structures patriarcales qui est associée au discours féminin – contrôler le discours féminin sert à réprimer la participation des femmes dans la vie publique, et cela est ce qui est vraiment inquiétant pour la société patriarcale.

Title: «Proverbs and Women's Speech in Early Modern Spain». Early Modern Spanish proverbs provide an entryway into ideas about women's language that were held as irrefutable, universal and fixed truths during this period. The view that they offer reiterates concepts found in other contemporary texts, in particular Early Modern moralist tracts devoted to the education of women. In both corpora we find similar warnings against the dangers of women's speech and criticism of the types of discourse considered characteristically feminine. When direct forms of participation in public life are not within reach, women in the Early Modern Era find in language their more natural and accessible instrument for social control and change. The negative stereotyping and the mistrust of the female voice conveyed by the proverbs can be seen as a defensive reaction against the erosion of the patriarchal structures –to control the speech of women was to control their participation in public life, and this is what really concerned the patriarchal order of society.

On the one hand, Socrates in the *Apology* criticizes gossip and prejudice.  On the other hand, his rhetorical strategy itself relies on quite similar structures.  Even more importantly, his analysis of law in the *Crito* reveals that law has structures remarkably similar to gossip and prejudice.  In this paper I make an argument about how to think philosophically about these pervasive structures within human life.

Previous research indicates gossip is a social bonding system that is use to establish shared acquaintances and/or attitudes, to punish group norm violators, or for coercion via invoking fear of gossipmongers. However, no empirical work explores directly the relationship between gossip about freeloaders leading to improved cooperation in recipients. Thus, we predicted that the sharing of negative gossip about the freeloading behavior of a third party will lead to higher levels of cooperation. Using levels of cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma game as a proxy to measure social bonding, we compared cooperation levels of 60 female respondents who met with a confederate randomly assigned to one of three conditions. They either (1) did not talk or were exposed to (2) negative reputation gossip or (3) self-disclosed negative reputation information. Results show that, even after controlling for a list of potential confounding factors, cooperation levels are high in both the control and self-disclosure condition and are significantly lower in the gossip condition. We suggest that gossip may spark initial relations, yet is insufficient to ignite a social bond sustained by cooperative action among complete strangers.

This review of the ontogeny of gossip and reputational understanding is divided into six sections, based on six ontogenetic stages through which children and adolescents pass during development. The first five of these stages loosely correspond to Piaget’s classic stages of sensorimotor, pre-operational (pre-conceptual), pre-operational (intuitive), concrete-operational and formal-operational development. The final stage corresponds to the transition from adolescence to full adulthood. As has recently been argued (Burman, 2013; Ingram, 2013), Piaget’s stages represent the psychological effects of underlying biological changes in the developing individual, not all of which changes are unique to humans. It is thus possible to accept the utility of dividing children’s development into stages, without accepting all the details of Piaget’s theory, or regarding either the stages, or the ages at which stage transitions take place, as strictly invariant (cf. Lourenço, 2016).
For each stage, I outline the characteristics of gossip production and reputational understanding in that age group. The overall intent is to provide a description of the cognitive ‘building blocks’ that have to be in place for the very socially sophisticated adult behaviour of gossip to be constructed. Finally, in the conclusion, I offer a tentative synthesis of the relationship between gossip and reputation through development. I argue that the ontogenies of these two phenomena are closely intertwined: changes in reputational understanding affect children’s linguistic accounts of third parties, including gossip; while their experiences of producing and consuming gossip enable the development of a more sophisticated understanding of reputation.

Una broma erótica y una sangre que supuestamente mana ante la cercanía de la homicida nos permiten observar la realidad cotidiana de una ciudad bajomedieval europea de tipo medio. Las formas de sociabilidad, los medios de vida, el ritmo de la jornada, las ropas y accesorios deseados, etc. Se ofrece la transcripción de un documento de extraordinario valor histórico y filológico.