Gossip and the everyday production of politics. By Niko Besnier. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 243. ISBN 9780824833572. $25.
Reviewed by Chad Nilep, University of Colorado
Language use is always embedded in systems of human interaction. With this in mind, Niko Besnier, a cultural anthropologist from the University of Amsterdam, presents an analysis of gossip in the Nukulaelae Atoll, spoken on the islands of Tuvalu. His focus is not only on this form of talk and its relationship with other conversational genres, but also on the use of gossip within the lives of the Nukulaelae people.
Ch. 1, ‘Gossip, hegemony, agency’ (1–28) outlines gossip as a practice that despite its ubiquity, remains under-studied since it requires complex theory and a linguistic fluency that is beyond the capabilities of many fieldworkers. Chs. 2 and 3 provide a wide-ranging description of life on the Nukulaelae Atoll and of B’s relationship with his subjects since his arrival there in 1980. In Ch. 2, ‘The world from a cooking hut’ (29–63), B provides a description of the history, geography, and economy of Tuvalu and of the atoll, as well as details of family and community life among the 350 or so residents. Ch. 3, ‘Hierarchy and egalitarianism’ (64–93), gives particular detail of the social and political system, analyzing how residents balance a preference for egalitarianism on one hand, and hierarchical ordering of age, gender, and family positions on the other.
While there is some discourse data in the earlier chapters, a complete discourse analysis is principally presented in Chs. 4–7. Ch. 4, ‘Morality and the structure of gossip’ (94–119), examines ways of mitigating responsibility for gossiping, including the joint construction of narratives, use of reported speech, and information withholding to encourage listeners to ask clarification questions. Ch. 5, ‘The twenty-dollar piglets’ (120–42), presents a close reading of a single gossip text to explore relationships among gossiping and oratory, capitalism and gift-giving, and religion, family, and politics on the atoll. In Ch. 6, ‘The two widows’ (143–65), B explores the connections between face-to-face talk and the broader world by analyzing accusations, circulated and constructed largely through gossip, that two sisters who had lived away from the atoll might be involved in sorcery. Ch. 7, ‘Sorcery and ambition’ (166–88), returns to these issues, this time examined through the treatment of sorcery charges at a Council of Elders meeting and continued gossip even after the formal dismissal of the charges. Finally, Ch. 8, ‘Gossip and everyday production of politics’ (189–94), provides a brief conclusion, summarizing how social institutions operate both in formal public discourses and in private face-to-face gossip.
The book may be criticized on two points. First, though he claims to use the tools of conversation analysis, B’s appeal to broader sociological context is very different from a typical conversation analysis—a difference that he acknowledges. Second, transcriptions in the book can be difficult to read. Tuvaluan speech is presented in a simplified Jefferson transcription, but the free English translations that are often interleaved within the transcript do not mark intonation and pauses, among others. This and the lack of glossing of individual words make it difficult to follow arguments that relate to formal linguistic elements.
As B puts it, ‘analyzing the formal structure of gossip talk is not an end, but a means of apprehending issues of a more general import’ (120). Criticisms notwithstanding, I found the balance between discourse analysis and ethnography in the book particularly enriching.