The circulation of chisme and rumor: Gossip, evidentiality, and authority in the perspective of Latino labor migrants in Israel

Abstract

Cross-culturally, the types of interactions that anthropologists have studied as 'gossip' or 'rumor' are opposed to types that constitute more authoritative texts. Instead of using participant structures to define such types of interactions, this opposition is used as a means to consider the evidential function ofsuch descriptors. The discussion considers these issues from the perspective of non-Jewish, Latino labor migrants in Israel, whose usage of chisme ('gossip') versus rumor ('rumor') maps to in-group and out-group sources. The paper further considers how such frames were used in a short-lived weekly magazine, centered on the ritual chronotope of La Cancha (the soccer field), and also how a denunciation was quashed by producing an authoritative voice that condemned it as 'chisme.' © 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.