Gossips

I was very bored so I decided to look up something that I missed.
I googled Gossips, guess wat I find?

Gossip


Etymology

The word "gossip" originates from god-sib, the godparent of one's child or parent of one's godchildren ("god-sibling"; compare the possible cognate of sib: sabhā), referring to a relationship of close friendship. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the usage of godsib back as far as 1014.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of gossip in the meaning of "idle talk; trifling or groundless rumour; tittle-tattle ... [e]asy, unrestrained talk or writing, esp. about persons or social incidents" back as far as 1811. This became a primary meaning of the word, although literary as well as everyday English can continue to use gossip in the sense of "talkative woman" (apparently a near-synonym with "godparent" in Early Modern English, the first attestation of the extended meaning of "anyone engaging in familiar or idle talk" dating from 1566). The verb to gossip dates to the early 17th century.
One popular etymology[citation needed] connects the word with "to sip": the tale tells how politicians would send assistants to bars to sit and listen to general public conversations. The assistants had instructions to sip a beer and listen to opinions; they responded to the command to "go sip", which allegedly turned into "gossip".

Functions of gossip
Gossip can serve to:
- normalise and re-inforce moral boundaries in a speech-community

- foster and build a sense of community with shared interests and information (I agree totally. I had this experience with my college classmates. )

- entertain and divert participants in gossip-sessions


- retail and develop various types of story — anecdotes, narratives and even legends — see memetics

- build structures of social accountability

- further mutual social grooming (like many other uses of language, only more so)

- provide a mating tool that allows (for example) women to mutually identify socially desirable men and social pariahs to avoid
(Geez....can u imagine this function?)

- reflect unvarnished and spontaneous public opinion - of interest to marketers, opinion pollers and secret-policemen

- undermine entrenched systems of power and domination as a form of political resistance (see this chargeable New York Times article by Patricia Cohen)


Various views on gossip

Some see gossip as trivial, hurtful and socially and/or intellectually unproductive. The Bahá'í Faith, for instance, refers to gossip as backbiting, and condemns and prohibits the practice, viewing it as a cause of disunity.
In a more sinister interpretation, restrictions on gossip could potentially paralyse the free flow of information and enforce straight-jacketed thinking and censorship in a community. Compare freedom of speech.
A feminist definition of gossip presents it as "a way of talking between women, intimate in style, personal and domestic in scope and setting, a female cultural event which springs from and perpetuates the restrictions of the female role, but also gives the comfort of validation." (Jones, 1990:243)
(I din know it is that liberating for women huh?! No wonder they say 3 women make a market.)

In Early Modern England

In Early Modern England the word "gossip" referred to companions in childbirth, not limited to the midwife. It also became a term for women-friends generally, with no necessary derogatory connotations.
(Wah, so powerful ah...I din know that.)
It commonly referred to an informal local sorority or social group, who could enforce socially-acceptable behaviour through private censure or through public rituals, such as "rough music" and the skimmington ride. The literature of the period has many references to this[citation needed], some of them doubtless fictional. In addition, legal records document actions taken by women themselves in the civil courts, and by the church in church courts.

These include accounts of the rituals that shamed or celebrated women’s sexuality: women washing a neighbour’s private parts with soap and water, or ‘polling’ pubic hair. In Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors 1566 a ‘walking mort’ relates how she was forced to agree to meet a man in his barn, but informed his wife. The wife arrived with her “five furious, sturdy, muffled gossips” who catch the errant husband with “his hosen about his legs” and give him a sound beating. The story clearly functions as a morality tale in which the gossips uphold the social order.
(Sounds more like a joke to me if you think of the account using your imagination.)
Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN: 0199255989


Gossip in Judaism
Main article: Lashon hara
Judaism considers gossip spoken without a constructive purpose (known in Hebrew as lashon hara) as a sin. Speaking negatively about people, even if retailing true facts, counts as sinful, as it demeans the dignity of man — both the speaker and the subject of the gossip.
( This view certainly sounds familar.)

Quotes
People with extraordinary minds, talk about ideas. People with average minds, talk about events. People with simple minds, talk about other people. - Anonymous

Gossip, even when it avoids the sexual, bears around it a faint flavor of the erotic. - Patricia Meyer Spacks
(What da heck??)