A micro-analytic study of gossip in elderly talk

IPhD ThesisThe 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.Turkish Ministry of Educatio

Textual collisions: the writing process and the Modernist experiment

This dissertation explores textual junctures such as this in the compositional processes of James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy and Ezra Pound that illuminate how these modernists negotiated the fraught position of being an author in the early twentieth century. This approach marks a departure from conventional textual criticism as I look at the intersections between textual criticism and literary theory, demonstrating the effects different theories can have on our understanding of textual criticism. Recent innovations in textual scholarship influenced by poststructuralist theorists allow me to uncover and describe the extent to which each of these four authors construct a self-conscious version of authorship in relation to their larger Modernist aims. This examination reveals how Joyce, Barnes, Loy, and Pound were subject to numerous outside influences, personal insecurities and preoccupations throughout the writing process, indicating their desires to both manipulate and participate in the modernist project of innovation and experimentation. The first chapter addresses the evolution of Joyce??s pre-writing, drafting and revising processes as a form of textual gossip. Joyce excised material from much of his early writing, controlling his work as a gossiper controls rumors. As he becameincreasingly more inclusive in his writing process, he also reflected a more positive regard for gossip as a similarly inclusive process. The second chapter examines the revision and editing of Ryder, Nightwood, and The Antiphon. Barnes increasingly sought legitimacy for her work by subjecting it to the conventionalizing editing of T.S. Eliot and Emily Holmes Coleman. In the third chapter, I interrogate Pound??s poetic practices and his status as an expatriate in order to reveal how Pound felt as an exile to his own writing. The fourth chapter analyzes Loy??s marginal status in the modernist canon, arguing that she created a persona through her public presentation of herself in her poems that is responsible for her constant and perpetual rediscovery

Idle Talk, Deadly Talk

The first book-length study of gossip’s place in the literature of the multilingual Caribbean reveals gossip to be a utilitarian and deeply political practice—a means of staging the narrative tensions, and waging the narrative battles, that mark Caribbean politics and culture. Revising the overly gendered existing critical frame, Rodríguez Navas argues that gossip is a fundamentally adversarial practice that at once surveils identities and empowers writers to skirt sanitized, monolithic historical accounts by weaving alternative versions of their nations’ histories from this self-governing discursive material. Reading recent fiction from the Hispanic, Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean and their diasporas, alongside poetry, song lyrics, journalism, memoirs, and political essays, Idle Talk, Deadly Talk maps gossip’s place in the Caribbean and reveals its rich possibilities as both literary theme and narrative device

Idle Talk, Deadly Talk: The Uses of Gossip in Caribbean Literature

Chaucer called it spiritual manslaughter ; Barthes and Benjamin deemed it dangerous linguistic nihilism. But gossip-long derided and dismissed by writers and intellectuals-is far from frivolous. In Idle Talk, Deadly Talk, Ana Rodríguez Navas reveals gossip to be an urgent, utilitarian, and deeply political practice-a means of staging the narrative tensions, and waging the narrative battles, that mark Caribbean politics and culture.From the calypso singer\u27s superficially innocent rhymes to the vicious slanders published in Trujillo-era gossip columns, words have been weapons, elevating one person or group at the expense of another. Revising the overly gendered existing critical frame, Rodríguez Navas argues that gossip is a fundamentally adversarial practice. Just as whispers and hearsay corrosively define and surveil identities, they also empower writers to skirt sanitized, monolithic historical accounts by weaving alternative versions of their nations\u27 histories from this self-governing discursive material. Reading recent fiction from the Hispanic, Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean and their diasporas, alongside poetry, song lyrics, journalism, memoirs, and political essays, Idle Talk, Deadly Talk maps gossip\u27s place in the Caribbean and reveals its rich possibilities as both literary theme and narrative device. As a means for mediating contested narratives, both public and private, gossip emerges as a vital resource for scholars and writers grappling with the region\u27s troubled history

The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times

The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What is novel is how scholars in many disciplines are posing the value question in new ways. The global economic alignments of the present pose many political, moral and theoretical questions, but the central issue the essays in this collection address is: how do relatively poor people of the Australia–Pacific region survive in current precarious times? In looking to answer this question, contributors directly engage the values and concepts of their interlocutors. At a time when understanding local implications of global processes is taking on new urgency, these essays bring finely honed anthropological perspectives to matters of universal human concern—they offer radical empirical critique based on intensive fieldwork that will be of great interest to those seeking to comprehend the bigger picture

SAY “YES, I DO” TO WHOM: A STUDY OF TAIWANESE IMMIGRANTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD DATING, MATE SELECTION AND MARRIAGE

Gordon (1964) in his theory of assimilation predicts that when a society is fully integrated, minority’s distinct characteristics would wane and inter-group marriage will be common. Thereafter, inter-group marriage has been widely used as an indicator of race/ethnic relations. This study investigates the attitudes of Taiwanese immigrants, who reside in Burnaby, British Columbia, toward dating, mate selection and marriage, as a case study, for the understanding of the process of integration of minority groups residing in large ethnic communities in Canada. The study begins with a discussion about the current debates based on the assimilationist and integrationist approach with an application of Gramsci’s theory of “good sense” and “common sense”. The empirical question of this study is whether intra-group marriage of ethnic minority is a contingent outcome of such ethnic group in areas of high ethnic density (i.e., ethnic communities), or it is a spontaneous outcome of their established ethnic solidarity based on the emergence of panethnicity due to social exclusion. An overview of the historical development of ethnic Chinese communities in Canada then follows for the purpose of illustrating the structural context these immigrants reside in. A detail demographic profile of the Taiwanese immigrants in Burnaby is also included. An examination of the phenomenon, Asian panethnicity, as a by-product of the assimilationist approach, among first and 1.5 generation Asian immigrants in Census Metropolitan Area of Vancouver is provided. Internal force from within group to pull the members of the Taiwanese community together, as well as the ethnic boundary they draw, are discussed the in following chapter. Intergenerational and gender difference of the Taiwanese immigrants of this study are also investigated. In summary, the results of the study indicate that intra-group marriage is more than a contingent outcome of a high level of immigrant population density in an ethnic community. Rather, marrying someone of the same race/ethnicity is more of a spontaneous outcome of ethnic solidarity in places where the emergence of Asian panethnicity has been observed. Patterns of Gramsci’s “common sense” are found among immigrants who have passively rationalized their subordinate status; however, some patterns of “good sense” are also shown among immigrants with the capacity to become historically autonomous

Public scrutiny, consciousness and resistance in an Ecuadorian highland village.

Cabala is a small, rural village of mestizo and indigena people in the Ecuadorian Andes. Since the local haciendas were disbanded in 1962 the economy and population of the village have both declined and the remaining villagers have increased their engagement in the money economy. Nevertheless most contemporary villagers were suspicious of urban Ecuador which they perceived as being organised exclusively according to trade transactions and saw themselves as belonging to a distinct moral community characterised by participation in exchange relations. Cabalano society was largely ordered according to the logic of a 'good faith economy' and any breach of the obligations inherent in exchange relations threatened not just the relationships between participants but the social order of the whole village. Transgressions of the social order were minimised by the stress most villagers placed on the correct performance of social roles and the maintenance of personal reputations. Thus the social and political order of the village was weighted towards conservatism and I describe how awareness of public scrutiny of their behaviour influenced how most villagers behaved towards members of their own household, managed their responses to the world and treated illness. At the same time, however, many villagers were able to manipulate public opinion, at least sometimes, and were able to both initiate, and adapt to, changes in the social order. Furthermore increased engagement in the money economy suggests that villagers were aware they could choose to order their social relations according to a different logic but chose not to. In the conclusion to the work, therefore, I argue that most villagers made an active choice to stress the importance of exchange relations in order to resist the perceived anomie of the modern, Ecuadorian state

December 10, 1959

https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/arbn_55-59/1048/thumbnail.jp

Hearsay, Testimony and Conference: Citationality in the Works of Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida.

This dissertation involves an examination of the effects and implications of three modes of citationality: hearsay, testimony and conference. As a term coined by Jacques Derrida, citationality involves the problematization of questions related to borders and limits and to the attempt to re-present the originary event thought to lie beyond the performance of citational acts of bearing witness. In chapter one I situate my project theoretically through an examination of the principles of deconstruction. In particular, Jacques Derrida\u27s work on the metaphysical concepts of presence and speech, in terms of repeatability or iterability, bears heavily on my study. As a function of iterability, citationality refers to the potential inherent in every element, textual, linguistic, or otherwise, to be disseminated and cited in a plurality of contexts and to assume a new and different meaning. It is from this perspective, from the possibility of citation, of exceeding limits and escaping regulation, that I conduct my analysis of what I call hearsay, testimony and conference in certain twentieth century texts. Chapters two through four focus on an application of the previously mentioned modes of citationality in the texts of Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, respectively. In chapter two, I examine Marguerite Duras\u27 Lol V. Stein cycle in which a reliance on hearsay impedes textual closure while generating a multiplicity of other texts that cite and re-cite one another. In chapter three, I analyze several recits by Maurice Blanchot in terms of testimony. These texts reveal the problematic in attempting to access and re-present that which has already been present and result in an effect of mise-en-abime of citations. Chapter four involves a reading of several polylogues by Jacques Derrida as instances of conference. Their insistence on a plurality of voices enables a deconstruction of the logos of restitution. While chapters two through four are devoted to a narrow application of a practice of citationality, chapter five marks the expansion of my topic. In this chapter, I situate previously raised questions of citationality in contemporary contexts with political and cultural implications

The Beacon, April 12, 2013

Vol. 24, Issue 84, 8 pageshttps://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/student_newspaper/1717/thumbnail.jp