Spinning Stories

Gossip and rumour are often described as a kind of virus, spreading unseen and unheeded through an unwitting population, sowing devastation in their wake. They infect people with a kind of fever – a mania to pass on what they’ve heard, to spread the news.

‘Within the social organism the bacilli of rumor are always active. Sometimes they move sluggishly in nonvirulent fashion. Sometimes they burst into a fever of violent activity. The fever, unfortunately, burns most dangerously when the health of the social organism is least able to withstand its ravages.’ (Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, 1947)

The etymology of gossip in German (Klatsch) suggests an intriguing connection with laundry, as well as reinforcing yet again the traditional link between gossip and women.

While a ‘gossip’ in English was originally a godparent, Klatsch has a more diffuse and even physical origin. It means at least three things: (1) ‘a resounding slap’, a kind of onomatopoeia; (2) a stain; (3) a pejorative word for prattle, typical of women’s conversation. These three meanings come together in the image of the communal laundry: washerwomen beat at their linen, washing and scrubbing away stains, while exchanging news, views and opinions on their neighbours. The dirty clothes retain the bodily dirt of their owner, so, in washing, washerwomen publicly reveal private and intimate secrets – stains, holes, worn-out places. They are in a privileged position to acquire morally dubious information about the laundry’s owners – hidden information about their private affairs – along with the power and opportunity to disseminate this information. The ‘resounding slap’ of their tools (mallets, mangles, scrubbing boards) signal to the rest of the neighbourhood what is going on: not just the washing of dirty linen, but the exchange of (dirty?) secrets. This privileged access to private information may well have appeared threatening to those not privy to it (especially men?)

The communal laundry appears in this image as the perfect place to reveal secrets about absent neighbours, and to discuss interpretations, memories and comments. The laundry is also a picture of the unequal distribution of power in gossip: not everyone has access to the places in which this kind of knowledge is exchanged.

Women have traditionally had easier access to these kind of places because of the division of labour between the sexes. This might help explain why women are also traditionally branded ‘gossips’, even if men and women are no different in their actual production of and participation in gossip.

(Jörg R. Bergman. Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, 1993)

In about the last fifty or sixty years, anthropology has turned its attention to gossip: an activity that was previously considered marginal and unworthy of serious consideration (perhaps because it was linked to unofficial talk, frivolity and women…) Anthropologists now take gossip very seriously, trying to figure out its function and place in social groups and struggles for power. Here are some rival interpretations of what gossip is about:

Gossip is a game, undertaken by members of a social group in order to maintain the coherence and unity of that group. When people gossip about each other, and about outsiders, they make ethical judgements about behaviour and maintain their group’s social values. At the same time, gossip is a means of social control: it polices acceptable behaviour and reinforces the values and demands of the dominant group. It’s like a ‘social weapon’ that members of the group can use against each other. So gossip is not idle: it is an important means by which conflicts are resolved or exacerbated, values are maintained and transmitted, and group unity is reinforced. It has social functions and rules, and the right to gossip about others is not automatic: you have to properly belong to a group before you’re allowed to gossip. (Max Gluckman, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology 4:3 (1963), 307-16)

Some anthropologists have a problem with Gluckman’s idea of gossip as social glue: that is, that it’s the individual who gossips, and not the society. Perhaps, then, gossip is a type of communication – it transmits information that protects an individual’s self-interest. Gossip is a device that the individual can manipulate to increase his or her standing in the community. The gossiper tries to collect information that he or she can then use to forward their self-interest: he or she tries to make their version of a story prevail, but also makes sure they have access to the flow of information. So gossip is still about control, but it’s the individual’s control of information that increases or decreases their social status, rather than social control of the group. (Robert Paine, ‘What is Gossip About? An Alternative Hypothesis’, Man new series 2:2 (1967), 278-85)

There have been attempts to reconcile these two points of view, arguing that gossip was both social (like Gluckman) and psychological (like Paine): it is individual activity in a social setting. Gossip is fundamentally about reputation – about the good names of the gossipers. This poses a problem for the anthropologist, who is particularly interested in social status and reputation, but who perhaps doesn’t understand the stakes involved in trying to get a sample group to share this kind of information with an outsider: where the anthropologist thinks he or she is being scientific, neutral, their subjects see a gossip who is trying to steal their good names (and write the information down, setting it in stone for ever). Passing on gossip to an anthropologist is, then, a means of confusing the issues and trying to mislead the questioner: gossip is a means of misleading others, throwing sand in their eyes, so they don’t form prejudicial – or even just firm – views on someone’s standing or status. (Peter J. Wilson, ‘Filcher of Good Names: An Enquiry into Anthropology and Gossip’, Man new series 9:1 (1974), 93-102)

Or perhaps gossip is like an economic transaction, in which information is exchanged for profit and mutual benefit. It can be informative – trading news, providing a kind of map of the social environment; moralising (when used to manipulate others or to bargain for psychological or even economic environment); or entertaining (when it’s exchanged between people in an equal setting). (Ralph L. Rosnow and Gary Alan Fine, Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay. New York: Elsevier, 1976)

Gossip is good for you. Perhaps it is the development and equivalence of mutual grooming among other primate species, and that human language evolved precisely for this purpose: to soothe, reassure, and strengthen the bonds that exist in a community. Where chimpanzees will spend hours grooming each other’s fur, human beings will sit and chat for ages – in fact gossip makes up most of our everyday conversations – and the result is the same: a feeling of well-being and belonging. Rather than to make hunting in teams easier, or to allow us to express some metaphysical truths, language evolved to enable us to gossip. (Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. London: Faber and Faber, 1996)