Women, men and gossip: what's the story?

Abstract

Gossip is a familiar and everyday conversational activity to most people. It is an activity that has been studied in a range of academic disciplines. Most of the academic literature has focused on functional and contextual aspects of gossip, while comparatively few studies have dealt with the linguistic features of gossip. This study employs both qualitative and quantitative techniques of analysis in order to investigate the linguistic features of gossip as practised by six same-sex pairs of female and male New Zealanders. The qualitative analysis focuses on how the topics, function, and general formal characteristics of gossip are reflected in the linguistic features of gossip. The quantitative analysis examines whether the sex of the speaker, and the conversational type has any effect on the frequency with which selected pragmatic particles (I think, you know, sort of, and I mean), interruptions, and minimal responses occur in different sections of taped conversation. Qualitative analysis revealed that gossip sections of conversation contained a high frequency of names, and a high degree of agreement between speakers. In discussing and negotiating opinions the gossipers tended to use off-record strategies when the chance of disagreement was high, and on-record strategies once agreement between the speakers had been established. Quantitative analysis suggested that gossip sections of conversation were likely to contain a high frequency of the selected pragmatic particles, interruptions and supportive minimal responses. The high frequency of these linguistic variables in gossip appeared to be connected to the affective, and supportive functions that these forms often fulfilled in the discourse. Both genders showed a shift towards the use of forms consistent with an affective and collaborative conversational style in the gossip sections of conversations, but it appeared that the two genders favoured different strategies to different degrees. Women indicated their support for their interlocutor's contribution more frequently than men by employing all-together-now interruptions. Men were more likely to show support for their interlocutor's contribution by employing supportive minimal responses. On this basis it is suggested that gossip is an affective and collaborative conversational type characterised by a high degree of listener involvement, and a low degree of on-record disagreement.