WHY WE GOSSIP
Gossip is a form of expression that has such bad press that few admit to engaging in it as such. Euphemisms are coined. When diplomats do it, it’s called intelligence gathering. The CIA, having a greater genius for jargon, calls it humint (for human intelligence). Our enemies gossip. What the rest of us do is share what we’ve heard. Society has always reserved a powerful scorn for gossipers, giving them names like tongue- wagger, tattler, scandal-monger, tale-bearer, prattler, backbiter and dirt-disher. And yet social psychologist Nicholas Emler of Dundee University maintains that gossip forms as much as eighty percent of a normal person’s conversation in a day. He decided that after studying the diaries of 150 people — what they said and to whom — I think a little bit of smugness and superiority goes into it. Gossip is about somebody else who’s worse off. To gossip is to feel superior to others. We condemn but relish. From the article “Psst!…
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