Gossip

The word gossip may refer to:

Functions of gossip

Gossip can serve to:

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• normalise and re-inforce moral boundaries in a speech-community
• foster and build a sense of community with shared interests and information
• entertain and divert participants in gossip-sessions
• retail and develop stories and even legends: see memetics
• build structures of social accountability
• further mutual social grooming (like many other uses of language, only more so)
• reflect unvarnished and spontaneous public opinion - of interest to marketeers, to pollsters and to secret policemen