Othering in gossip: “you go out you have a laugh and you can pull yeah okay but like…”:

Abstract

It has been claimed that gossip allows participants to negotiate aspects of group membership, and the inclusion and exclusion of others, by working out shared values. This article examines instances of gossipy storytelling among young friends during which participants negotiate self- and other-identities in particular ways. Participants are found to share judgments not only about others' behavior but also about their own behavior through particular processes of othering. A range of discursive strategies place the characters in gossip-stories (even in the category called “self-gossip”) in marginalized, liminal, or uncertain social spaces. In the gossipy talk episodes examined, social “transgression” might be oriented to as a serious matter and thus pejorated, or oriented to in a playful key and thus celebrated. This ambiguity – “Do we disapprove or approve, of this ‘bad’ behavior?” – means that in negotiating the identity status of “gossipees” liminality is constant. It is argued that othering, as an emergent category, along with the particular discursive strategies that achieve it, is an aspect of gossip that deserves further attention.We thank Jane Hill, two anonymous reviewers, and especially Nik Coupland for their most helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. To clarify the title, from ex.(1), you can pull is British English; in American English perhaps the closest expression to pull is get with, proactively set up a link with someone, probably a sexual one, probably only for one evening or night.

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