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GOSSIP: ONLY GIRLS?

Gender Studies is among those rare disciplines which doesnt just aim to be interdisciplinary but which, because of its very nature, encompasses the social sciences for their willingness to question everything; humanities for their stock of literature which provide the ammunition for raising those questions; and the natural sciences for their biological and evolutionary input. It is also among those all too common disciplines which become synonymous with one of their own sub-sets, Womens Studies. Gender Studies started off as Womens Studies in the 1970s when women in academia protested against the production of academic knowledge which made them non-entities and ignored gender power relations in society. Today, it is combined with Mens Studies and Queer Studies, although Womens Studies remains the topic most discourse is directed towards. Since 1970, research in Gender Studies has ranged from cyborg theory, ecological feminism, body, workplace, politics, and more. The relationship between gender and language is another field which has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Studies have focused on anything from different syntactical, phonological or lexical uses of language to aspects of conversation analysis, such as topic nomination and control, interruptions and other interactional features. The aspect of research relevant to this paper is that of differences in communication patterns among men and women and how these lend themselves to gossip falling squarely in the domain of womens language.

Gossip:
Conversation or reports about other people's private lives which might be unkind, disapproving or not true. (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary, 3rd edition) Three out of six sentences in this dictionary entry illustrating the usage of the word gossip had a gender-specific pronoun/proper noun which indicated the gossiper was a woman: Her letter was full of gossip. Jane and Lyn sat in the kitchen having a good gossip about their friends. She's a terrible gossip. Deborah Jones (1980) set out to prove the dictionaries and public opinion wrong by showing that womens gossip often has very positive social functions and a less unkind history. The word gossip,

Literature Review | Page 2 of 9 she notes, descends from Old English god sib, which originally meant something similar to godparent or supportive friend. This later became specialized to female friend and further specialized to designate a friend invited to be present at a birth. Birthing among the English at this time (around the 16th century) was a female-dominated event and the women who were present at the child births idly chattered among themselves (Rosnow & Fine 1976). Jones speculates that the picture of gossip as a nasty kind of feminine talk derived from mens fears of what unsupervised women might be saying to one another on such occasions (read section on Gossip as a Threat to Men for more details). Jones efforts aside, gossip is still considered widely to be negative talk. A review of anthropological and sociological studies conducted by Bergmann (1993) listed the most common topics of gossip as personal qualities and idiosyncrasies, behavioural surprises and inconsistencies, character flaws, discrepancies between actual behaviour and moral claims, bad manners, socially unaccepted modes of behaviour, shortcomings, improprieties, omissions, presumptions, blameable mistakes, misfortunes, and failures. Jennifer Coates (1989) suggests that any informal talk among close women friends counts as gossip whether or not it focuses on reporting and evaluating activities of absent parties and negatively at that. Coates (1996) offers transcripts and analyses of a number of conversations in which the women participating collectively explore topics that matter to them in a supportive and positive way. Jones (1990) gave more structure to Coates nonstandard definition of gossip by categorising it in terms of:

House Talk - its distinguishing function being the exchange of information and resources connected with the female role as an occupation.

Scandal - a considered judging of the behaviour of others, and women in particular. It is usually made in terms of the domestic morality, of which women have been appointed guardians.

Bitching - the overt expression of womens anger at their restricted role and inferior status. They express this in private and to other women only. The women who bitch are not expecting change; they want only to make their complaints in an environment where their anger will be understood and expected.

Chatting - the most intimate form of gossip, a mutual self-disclosure, a transaction where women use to their own advantage the skills they have learned as part of their job of nurturing others.

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Functions of Gossip:
Questions have been raised about what makes gossip so irresistible. The most popular suggestion was put forth by Gluckman (1963; 1968) who concluded from observational field data that gossip serves to bind groups together, reinforcing cultural norms and rules and marginalizing those who have veered from group-level expectations (Baumeister, Zhang, Vohs, 2004). His sentiment was echoed by Dunbar (1996) who also suggested that gossip is a mechanism for bonding social groups together in a manner similar to the grooming found among primates. It has also been proposed that gossip is among the best tools available for social comparison (Wert & Salovey 2004). Although Wert and Salovey propose six different types of social comparison comparison with similar others, downward comparison, upward comparison, comparison of in-group with out-group, constructed comparison, and emotional comparison they suggest that downward comparison is the most used tool especially as a means of self-enhancement. American writer and feminist Erica Jong (1942) wrote that gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. Indeed, temporary forms of relief from oppression may be provided by gossip (Wert and Salovey 2004). Gossip seems to be most frequently about the private lives (as opposed to the professional lives) of people (de Sousa, 1994). This focus on the personal and private may have an equalising effect (de Sousa, 1994), if only momentarily in the minds of the gossipers as they imagine the powerful others not in their capacity as superiors but as ordinary people with ordinary personal problems. Relatedly, gossip has been found to play a role as a safety valve by providing a means for stress relief and emotional support (Waddington & Fletcher, 2005). With this view, in can be clearly understood why and how gossip came to be associated with women. Like the members of any repressed group, women are verbal persons, talking because they are permitted no other form of expression, and those out of power must settle for talk (Millett 1971). The unequal access to power in the public and private spheres meant that men talk about (controlling) the public, and women talk about (controlling) the private. In fact, it has been argued that in the absence of formal control of material resources or institutionalized political authority, women in certain European peasant societies wield considerable influence through making strategic use of all kinds of information they gather through frequent informal talking with one another while washing clothes, shopping etc. Another function of gossip, rather far-fetchedly, has been proposed by Feinberg et al (2012) who has suggested that much of what we call gossip is driven by a sincere desire to help others. He reports the existence of a category of rumour called prosocial gossip which has positive effects for groups:

Literature Review | Page 4 of 9 when people pass on information about others who are selfish and untrustworthy, it warns others to avoid these people. Similarly, in their review of observational studies of gossip in small societies, Wilson (2000) concluded that gossip deters selfishness and free-riding. A function of negative gossip put forth by Massar, Buunkt, and Rept (2012) which is not likely to find favour with the feminists suggests that girls in the fifteen- to nineteen-year-old range who would be most actively competing for mates are likely to engage in gossip that would sabotage another females image as a desirable reproductive partner, such as commenting on her promiscuity, physical appearance, or some other aberrant or quirky traits. They do this to secure the mate for themselves. A separate section dedicated to gossip in the workplace, more specifically around the water cooler, was inevitable. Pro-office gossip researchers have suggested that rather than viewing it as a workplace problem to be managed, gossip should be seen for what it really is: a potentially rich source of informal narrative knowledge and management information that can elaborate on a range of organisational issues. In keeping with this view, the focus should be not on how to curb gossip, but on how to capture gossip as data that can be can be analysed, interpreted and used in management practice. Grosser (2010) found that friendship ties between employees are positively related to engaging in both positive and negative gossip, whereas instrumental workflow ties, which are less trusting than friendship ties, are related solely with positive gossip. He also found that an employees total gossiping activity (both positive and negative) is negatively related to supervisors evaluations of the employees performance, while being positively related to peers evaluations of the employees informal influence.

Language Characteristics:
There are certain differences in the way men and women look at and use language which makes women more inclined to gossip. Affective v/s Instrumental Use of Language: According to Tannen (1994), the language of conversation for women is primarily a language of rapport i.e. a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. For men, talk is primarily a means to provide information, preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order i.e. a language of report. Women are more likely than men to ask questions and agree with others, and women are less likely than men to challenge others statements and

Literature Review | Page 5 of 9 frame others arguments (Tannen 1990; Coates 1996; Lackoff 1990). These differences are theorized to reflect womens greater concerns for cooperation and connection in their relationships. It appears then that women, in order to build relationships, spend more time than men talking with their friends, while men spend more time engaging in other activities with their friends. Despite talking more to establish better relationships, a study by Watson (2012) has, contradictorily, shown that gossiping actually shares an inverse relationship with the quality of friendship among females. He suggests that female friendships are characterised by communion or intimacy and that certain types of gossip (such as talking about physical appearances; see below for details) can be seen as a competitive threat to the relationship in females. On the other hand, gossip was shown to have a moderately strong effect on male friendships, perhaps because bonding among males is linked to status. Males who have more knowledge and, subsequently, control over information, are seen as enjoying a higher status in their friend group. Conversational Topics: Men and women also differ in the topics they choose to discuss. Women are said to select topics of a more personal type such as their family, their emotions, and their friendships. Besides that, women are not afraid to embed details in their speech in order to involve people in the events being described. These characteristics of womens language relate directly to the notion of gossip. Men, however, use more abstract communication, speaking in general terms (Kramarae and Treicher, 1983; Schaef, 1985). Men tend to use linear speech, moving sequentially through points unlike women. Whereas linear speech requires less intimacy, women use a personal style, which allows them to divulge details of experience and personal matters. With relation to specific topics of conversation, Watson (2012) found that 17- to 29-year-old female college students scored highest on gossiping about another persons physical appearances followed by social information gossip i.e. knowing what was going on in the college/at work and in the lives of acquaintances. Male students scored highest on achievement related gossip i.e. discussing statusoriented topics such as pay rise etc. Conversational Style: Women tend to pick up and build on each others themes (Coates 1996), engage in supportive overlap (Eckert 1990, Coates 1993), and provide backchanneling (Bilious & Krauss 1988), which is seen as evidence that they are attending to the main stream of speech, not only with nod, but with vocalisms: uh-huh, yeah, really?, no kidding, etc. They are also more likely to finish off each others sentences as a bonding method (Locke 2011).

Literature Review | Page 6 of 9 Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987) have developed a theory of politeness that builds on Erving Goffmans (1967) ideas about facework What Brown and Levinson call positive politeness involves addressing positive face needs: showing that you like or empathize with someone, that you include them in your we, your in-group. Commiserating with one another about common problems (interfering parents or a shared obnoxious boss), admiring the others taste in clothes by commenting approvingly on their attire, friendly joking and playful banter marked by profanity and familiar terms of address (sweetie, you old sonofabitch): such speech moves can exemplify positive politeness. Janet Holmes, who has done a lot of empirical work on gendered ways of talking among English speakers, associates womens putatively greater attention to (politeness-oriented) facework with a greater interest in the affective function of talk. The affective function of talk covers both the overt expression of emotion (How sad, Damn it, What a sweetie/bastard he is) and everything that has to do with the maintenance of social relations.

Gossip as a Threat to Men:

Women supporting one another through gossip raised the possibility of their challenging male authority or at least devising ways to resist it in the minds of men. In a widely read essay about Oroel, a small Spanish village, Susan Harding (1975) argues that womens words enable them to exercise real power in local matters of some consequence. And it is not just what women do say to one another and to the men in their lives: it is also concern about what they might say that constrains both other women and men in significant ways. Since womens talk is something that men do not control, and within it women exert power by discussing mens behaviour, men are anxious of gossip. If we allow that womens talk is governed by the same talk is action ideology that governs mens public and religious talk, then the reason for mens wariness becomes clear. It is not due only to mens inability to control the nature of the talk, but also to the fact that it can affect mens relationships, social standing, health, and welfare (Innes 2006). Therefore, womens gossip is hardly idle but does social work of many different kinds. Consequently, women have been prevented from talking together by ridicule, interruption, physical constraint, an even by statute (Oakley 1972), and the fear of gossip and its subversive power has been associated with witchcraft (Gluckman 1963).

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Gossip among Men:

Just how a particular speech activity is classified may itself be coloured by gender ideologies. Highly similar exchanges in English are sometimes classified differently depending on who the participants are. A mans shoptalk with his friends and colleagues may be hard to distinguish from a womans gossip with hers. Such gendering of speech activities is often used to reinforce gender hierarchies. Where shoptalk is seen as something that professionals engage in, gossip is seen as idle talk. To discuss matters relating to ones trade or profession; business (i.e. to talk shop) is to do ones duty whereas to reveal the private concerns of others or pass on confidential information (i.e. to gossip) is to raise questions about ones integrity. A number of feminist analysts in recent years have revisited the concept of gossip, questioning both its feminine gendering and bad reputation. Much of what passes as shoptalk involves evaluative (and often critical) commentary on absent parties, characteristics often offered as definitive of gossip (Wierzbicka 1987). There are also many other situations in which men engage in speech activities that would count as gossip, using the standard criteria. Deborah Cameron (1997) analyzes the talk of some young men just hanging out in front of the TV in their living quarters in a small Virginia college. Some of this talk involved bragging about sexual conquests (and, at the same time, certainly speaking of what might seem to be private concerns of the women with whom they had scored) and about their own capacity for holding alcohol. But also figuring prominently were comments about various other (absent) men, who were referred to as homos or faggots for not conforming to the norms the college men endorsed for real men. Seldom was there any real information on sexual preference or behaviour of the men being criticized. The guys disparagement of absent others, therefore, fit the standard definitions of gossip except for its gendering.
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References:
Baumeister, R. F., Zhang, L., & Vohs, K., D. (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8, pp. 111-121. Bergmann, J. R. (1993). Discreet indiscretions: The social organization of gossip (J. J. Bednarz, Trans.). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Bilious, F. & Krauss, R. (1988). Dominance and accommodation in the conversational behaviors of same- and mixed-gender dyads. Language and Communication, 8, pp. 83-194. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Cameron, D. (1997). Performing gender identity: young mens talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Johnson and Meinhof, Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell. Coates, J. (1989). Gossip revisited: language in all-female groups. In J. Coates & D. Cameron (eds.) 1989 Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex. Pp. 94-122. New York: Longman (1993). Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Sex Differences in Language. 2nd. ed. New York: Longman. (1993). No gap, lots of overlap: turn-taking patterns in the talk of women friends. In Researching Language and Literacy in Social Context, ed. By David G., Janet M. & Barry S., 177--192. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters. (1996). Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends. Oxford: Blackwell. de Sousa, R. (1994). In praise of gossip: Indiscretion as a saintly virtue. In R. F. Goodman & A. BenZeev (Eds.), Good gossip, pp. 2533. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Dunbar, R. I. M. (1996). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8, 100110. Eckert, P. (1990). Cooperative competition in adolescent girl talk. Discourse Processes, 13, pp. 92-122. Emler, N. (1994). Gossip, reputation, and social adaptation. In R. F. Goodman & A. Ben-Zeev (Eds.), Good gossip (pp. 117138). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Gluckman, M. (1963). Gossip and scandal. Current Anthropology, 4, 307316. (1968). Psychological, sociological, and anthropological explanations of witchcraft and gossip: A clarification. Man (NS), 3, pp. 2034. Goffman, E. (1967). On face work. In Interaction Ritual, pp. 5-45. New York: Doubleday. Grosser, T., Lopez-Kidwell, V,. & Labianca, G. (2010). A Social Network Analysis of Positive and Negative Gossip in Organizational Life. Group and Organization Management, XX(X,) 136 Harding, S. (1975). Women and words in a Spanish village. In Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. by Rayna R., pp. 283-308. New York: Monthly Review Press. Innes, P. (2006). The interplay of genres, gender, and language ideology among the Muskogee. Language in Society,35(02), pp 231-259 Jones, D. (1980). Gossip: notes on womens oral culture. In The Voices and Words of Women and Men, ed. by Kramarae, C, pp. 193-198. Oxford: Pergamon Press. (1990). Gossip: notes on womens oral culture. In Deborah Cameron (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language, 1st ed. London: Routledge Kramarae & Treicher (1983). Gender, language and the workplace: an exploratory study. Women in Management Review, 22(4), 319-336. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Womans Place. New York: Harper & Row.

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Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1990). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levin, J., & Arluke, A. (1985). An exploratory analysis of sex differences in gossip. Sex Roles, 12, 281286. Locke, J. (2011). Duels and Duets: Why men and women talk so differently. New York: Cambridge University Press. Massar, K., Buunkt, A., & Rempt, S. (2012). Age differences in women's tendency to gossip are mediated by their mate value. Personality and Individual Differences, 52 (1), pp. 106-109 Oakley, A. (1972). Sex, gender and society. London: Maurice Temple Smith. Rosnow, R.L., & Fine, G.A. (1976). Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay. New York: Elsevier. Schaef, A. (1985). Women's Reality: An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society, Harper & Row, San Francisco, CA. Tannen, D. (1990). You Just Dont Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: William Morrow. (1994). The relativity of linguistic strategies: rethinking power and solidarity in gender and dominance. In Gender and Discourse, ed. By Deborah Tannen, 19-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waddington, K., & Fletcher, C. (2005). Gossip and emotion in nursing and health-care organizations. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 19, 378-394. Watson, D. (2012). Gender Differences in Gossip and Friendship. Sex Roles, 1-9 Waugh, R. (2012, May 23). Men and women both love to gossip - but chatter tends to make males closer, whereas it can tear female friends apart. Daily Mail. Retrieved September 5, 2012, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2148784/Men-women-love-gossip--chatter-tends-makemales-closer-tear-women-friends-apart.html Wert, S.R., & Salovey, P. (2004). A social comparison account of gossip. Review of General Psychology, 8, 122137. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1987. English Speech Act Verbs: A Dictionary. Sydney: Academic Press. Wilson, D. S., Wilczynski, C., Wells, A., & Weiser, L (2000). Gossip and other aspects of language as group-level adaptations. In C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.). The evolution of cognition. Vienna series in theoretical biology (pp. 347-365). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.