Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T01:33:59.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Godfather's gossip*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Diego Gambetta
Get access

Extract

My attention to gossip as a notion worthy of reflection was attracted by a trivial detail: the English etymology of gossip is god-sib, godfather, or, generally, god parent, ‘denoting—says the English Oxford Dictionary—the spiritual affinity of the baptized and their sponsor’. This intriguing origin alludes to gossip as the performing of an initiation ritual, the creation of an exclusive bond; above all, it bears an uncanny association with the mafia which happens to have been the topic of my research for sometime. I suppose I could have interpreted god-sib through the obvious gender bias as deriving from godmother rather than from godfather; this tallies with the Italian comare or the French commère which can also denote a gossip. But I did not think of this possibility at first. Instead, carried away by linguistic speculation, I went to check the etymology of the main Italian word for gossip, pettegolezzo. I was not a little surprised to find that the word comes from a rather less inspiring source. It comes from peto, to fart. In some northern Italian dialects, venetian, piedmontese and emilian, a common expression, ‘contar tutti i peti’, ‘to tell every fart’, refers to the habit of reporting and speculating about trivial events.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , November 1994 , pp. 199 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arlacchi, P. (ed.), 1992, Gli uomini del disonore. La mafia siciliana nella vita del grande pentito Antonino Calderone (Milano: Mondadori).Google Scholar
Banfield, E.C., 1958, The moral basis of a backward society (New York: The Free Press).Google Scholar
Barkow, J.H., 1992, Beneath new culture is old psychology: gossip and social stratification, in Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. (eds.), The adapted mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, Stirling R., 1957, Some psychological mechanisms operative in gossip, Social Forces, 262–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bok, S., 1981, Secrets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Bonanno, J., 1983, A man of honour. The autobiography of a gossip godfather (London: Unwin Paperbacks).Google Scholar
Brison, K.J., 1993, Just talk. Gossip, meetings, and power in a Papua New Guinea village (California University Press).Google Scholar
Coleman, J., 1990, Foundations of social theory (Harvard: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Coombe, R.J., 1993, Tactics of appropriation and the politics of recognition in late modern democracies, Political Theory, 21, 3, 411–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, B., 1970, What is hopi gossip about? Information management and hopi factions, Man, 5, 88–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dasgupta, P., 1988, Trust as a commodity, in Gambetta, D. (ed.) 1988.Google Scholar
Ellickson, R.C., 1991, Order without law. How neighbours settle disputes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, J., 1983a, Sour grapes (Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, J., 1983b, Explaining technical change (Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Epstein, A.L., 1969, Gossip, norms and social network, in Mitchell, J. Clyde (ed.), Social networks in urban situations. Analyses of personal relationships in Central African towns (Manchester: Manchester University Press).Google Scholar
Frijda, N.H., 1986, The emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. (ed.), 1988, Trust. Making and breaking cooperative relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. (ed.), 1993, The Sicilian Mafia: the business of private protection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. (ed.), 1994, Inscrutable markets, Rationality and Society, 6, 3, 353–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gluckman, M, 1963, Gossip and scandal, Current Anthropology, 4, 307–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gluckman, M, 1968, Psychological, sociological and anthropological explanations of witchcraft and gossip: a clarification, Man, 3, 20–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E., 1958, The presentation of the self in everyday life (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Science Research Centre), Monograph No. 2.Google Scholar
GowerChapman, C. Chapman, C., 1973, Milocca: a Sicilian village (London: Allen & Unwin).Google Scholar
Haviland, J.B., 1977, Gossip, reputation and knowledge in Zinacantan (Chicago: Chicago University Press).Google Scholar
Hirschman, A.O., 1986, Against parsimony, in Hirschman, A.O., Rival views of market society (London: Viking).Google Scholar
Merry, S.E., 1984, Rethinking gossip and scandal, in Black, D. (ed.) Towards a theory of social control, vol. 1, 271–302 (New York: Academic Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olinick, S.L., 1980, The gossiping psychoanalyst, International Review of Psychoanalysis 7, 439–445.Google Scholar
Sabini, J. and Silver, M., 1982, Moralities of everyday life (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Simmel, G., [1908] 1991, Secret et sociétés secrètes (Strasbourg: Circé).Google Scholar
Spacks Meyer, P., 1985, Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).Google Scholar
Taylor, G., 1994, Gossip as moral talk, in Goodman, R.F. and Ben-Ze'ev, A. (eds), Good gossip (University of Kansas Press).Google Scholar
Watson, H., 1992, Women in the City of the Dead (London: Hurst).Google Scholar
Zinovieff, S., 1991, Inside out and outside in: gossip, hospitality and the Greek character, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 1, 120–134.Google Scholar