A micro-analytic study of gossip in elderly talk

Abstract

The phenomenon of gossip, broadly defined as the evaluative and/or informative talk about absent third parties, has been one of the most commonly used forms of talk since the very beginning of the human interaction; and accordingly has been studied from various schools of research such as sociology, psychology, linguistics, religious studies etc. (Gluckman, 1963; Fine & Rosnow, 1978; Bergmann, 1993; Foster, 2004). However, the sequential organisation of gossip talk, and the topics of gossip still remain underexplored. This study aims to investigate this underexplored phenomenon with an emic perspective in an old people’s home in Turkey, where the body of research on gossip so far is limited to quantitative questionnaire data or participant perception based interview data. This PhD thesis adopts an Ethnomethodological approach, and the analysis draws on Sack’s Conversation Analysis, to shed a light on 1) the sequential organisation and 2) the topics of gossip at a micro-analytic level. From a total of 92 evaluative gossip extracts of different lengths analysed for this study, 28 are presented in this thesis. The results of the analysis add to the existent literature on two levels; the first one is sequential analysis of gossip, and the second is contextual elements present in gossip sequences. The results of the sequential analysis indicate that gossipers apply specific ways to introducing gossip, the gossip hearers have similar strategies to respond to the gossip initiation, and finally there is a systematicity in gossip endings. The second, contextual side, draws the attention to the ways in which elderly interact non-institutionally in this institutional context, and how they place themselves as experts in the society by the aid of their active use of language (i.e. gossip), by focusing on topics of gossip, gossip as an element of appraisal, gossip as a connection tool, teacher’s fluid identity, use of proverbs, and the existence of religion-morality in gossip talk.