In the Lingthusiasm podcast about Theory of Mind which I linked not long ago there was some discussion about the importance of gossip socially. Their take was that gossip may have even been one of the first functions of language, as we needed to have lasting ideas about whether someone was trustworthy or not, and ways of communicating values - especially what people should not do. Interestingly, gossip in all societies studied does not consist much on speculating on the states of mind or motives of others, but has a strong tendency to focus on what actions people have actually done. "She ate my cake," as one of the podcasts hosts said.
That has stuck with me and I have finally gone and taken a look at the topic. The first thing that occurred to me is that in writing, people focus on motives all the time. They make up what the person they are talking about must be thinking, usually as a criticism. Political discourse is often entirely about imagined motives. I have had people question my motives (sometimes explicitly, but more often revealing it with subtler clues) in writing, but I can't recall an incident of this in conversation. It is more confrontive, likely more socially dangerous to call people out like that live. This further suggested...
I am already ahead of myself. The Wikipedia article on Gossip is quite interesting. Go there first and play around with that.
In fact, let's not discuss it further here until you've seen that and chewed on it a bit. I should have time tomorrow or Saturday to come back to this. Interesting that I was so little interested in the meaning of workplace gossip now.
2 comments:
"The word is from Old English godsibb, from god and sibb, the term for the godparents of one's child or the parents of one's godchild, generally very close friends."
I always look first to etymology to understand a concept, and that's an amazing one.
The other night we were doing some rescue training and some guy was out walking his dog. One of the firefighters asked who he was, and was told 'he lives at that yellow house over there.' Yeah, the firefighter asked again: but who is he? The answer he got was parentage and people, and he suddenly expressed disdain of this stranger he's never met (but whose people he knows).
I suddenly realized that, by moving to a new place among people who don't know me or mine, I've been exempted from all that. They had to get to know me the hard way. That was probably better for them; I come from good people, but you would need to spend some time with me to really know me because I'm not a whole lot like them. I aspire to be more like my father was, but I'm not.
That all said, the first thing I thought of was how seriously -- severely -- the Bible often treats gossip.
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