Gossip and Power

[lydy]

I half-heard an article on the BBC radio this morning while I was working. The article was on gossip, which the defined in part as evaluative. Just facts about someone isn't really gossip, it's the facts coupled with a judgment that makes it gossip. They also talked about the ways in which gossip was punished in the past (some pretty gruesome things were used in the Middle Ages), and they mentioned that evaluative talk is also one of the ways in which we establish and enforce social norms. They talked a bit about how repressive regimes attempt to prevent such talk.

So, I only heard part of it, because work, so I didn't hear if they drew the connection between gossip being usually considered a female crime, and the repression of women. It makes sense that gossip would be one of the ways in which people on the wrong end of a power equation attempt to control their lives. Indeed, the article did point to examples of gossip about corporations being one of the ways in which consumers gain power over the corporations. It would also make sense that gossip would be one of the ways that women exert power in their social space. And so it would make sense that it would be a deprecated form of exercising power.

I also am reminded that I believe Deborah Tannen once did a study which showed that men gossiped a great deal more than women, but they didn't call it that.

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure when it got decided that gossip has to be judgmental to be gossip. If that's the case, then we need another word for just passing on interesting information about other people. "Evaluative" is a better word than judgmental. But I still say "We're just gossiping" when I'm chatting with co-workers about where our former co-workers got new jobs. What else would you call it?

Personally, I believe that gossip is the basic unit of social commerce, and ultimately the basis of community.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I agree that gossip is the basic unit of social commerce.

The example you give is, I think, evaluative, although in a round-about fashion. Because of the context, it has an evaluative component about your work environment. It's mostly implications. This really good worker got this really good job, and that's a comment both on the worker and the job that let him go. This guy, not so good, got a great job, and that is also an implied comment on the state both of his work with you and the place he went to.

One of the things the piece talked about was evaluative speech not merely being the actual words, but tones of voice, facial expressions, and so on. There was a funny bit about the idea of trying to stop people from rolling their eyes when they shared information.

This leads me to wonder what kind of speech _isn't_ evaluative. Will contemplate further. I may have expanded the definition of evaluative to such an extent it's become meaningless.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I agree that the example I gave could be called evaluative. It is not, however, judgmental or negative, which is what many people mean when they use the term "gossip."

"One of the things the piece talked about was evaluative speech not merely being the actual words, but tones of voice, facial expressions, and so on. There was a funny bit about the idea of trying to stop people from rolling their eyes when they shared information. "

And this is setting me off on a tangent. You know what would be a really great sociological study? Business conference calls. Two groups of people in geographically separated locations having a meeting by speakerphone. For this study you need a camera crew in each location to capture the eye-rolls, smothered giggles, elaborate yawns and other silent theater that goes on throughout the call. Presumably the people on the other end of the line are doing the same thing. The researchers, of course, would be the only ones that could see both video feeds side by side while listening to the call.

I'm not sure exactly what hypothesis this study would be testing, but it would be hilarious.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think there should be some definition for passing along information about others that is positive or neutral, rather than negative. I think it's that negative quality to the information that creates "gossip", and that positive or neutral information is not gossip. Though I call it that too, since I don't have another word for it.

K.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

If what I suspect is going on is actually going on, that is to say an attempt to control people, then there is a real benefit to the power structure to wash away the difference between malicious gossip and passing on useful information. By conflating the two situations, you help silence people. Since gossip, both positive and negative, are important ways that disempowered people affect their environment, there is a real need to stigmatize all such transactions. Also, people frequently try to distinguish between positive and negative gossip by drawing the line between positive and negative characterizations of people. However, it seems to me that the truth is a far more important distinguishing characteristic. If it is true that this person is abusing their spouse, then that information is important for the community to have. If it is not true that this person is always kind to dogs, then spreading that information is not a benefit to the community at large, and might lead someone to mistakenly allow said person to look after their dog. I think that is also often difficult to distinguish between positive, negative, and neutral information. Things that I think are relatively neutral may not be so when concatenated with other facts of which I am not aware, for instance. Gossip is part of how we build more complete pictures of our social environment.

The case of someone telling stories specifically designed to damage someone is a genuine problem. And whether these stories are true or false is only partly relevant. It is perfectly possible to smear someone's good name while sticking to carefully selected truths in carefully selected contexts. The cure for this seems to me to be the usual cure for most free speech: more speech. But that doesn't always work, either, of course.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I agree that negative gossip (e.g., badmouthing) is less good than passing along neutral or even positive information. But is it more complicated than that? Part of the info is who you pass it on to, right? Networking about jobs, say, is "the old boys network" when old, old-money white guys do it in the country club (for example) but just passing word of a job opening when the techies do it.

I think gossip is absolutely about power and privilege, only that part runs more as subtext than overtly.