Black Gossip site Online

This study was made possible in part by funds granted by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and administered by the Urban Language Study of the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C. Its contents are solely my responsibility. I am indebted to Joey L. Dillard, Anita Friedman, Mogens B. Larsen, Bengt Loman, and William A. Stewart for their comments on an earlier version. Since I may not have followed their advice completely, they are in no way responsible for errors or omissions in this version. Only after this paper was written did I see Szwed's study (1966), in which a similar point of view is applied. Later yet, after it had been submitted for publication, Paine's cogent statement of the view of gossip as information was published (1967).