Outlines: Attitudes towards gossip

As you have seen in the three texts, there are various attitudes when it comes to gossip. In what follows, we will take a look at the different attitudes towards gossip expressed in Text 2 ("This column will change your life" by Oliver Burkeman) and Text 3 ("Social Grooming: The Role of Gossip" by Michael S. Gazzaniaga).

Text 2: “This column will change your life”

Text 2 is an article written by Oliver Burkeman for The Guardian. Oliver Burkeman’s section is called “This column will change your life” and this particular column deals with gossip. The author himself has tried to give up gossiping and found it extremely difficult, as gossip is, in fact “everything” (l. 19).

Here is an outline of Oliver Burkeman’s attitudes towards gossip.

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Text 3: “Social Grooming: The Role of Gossip”

Text 3 is written by Michael S. Gazzaniaga, the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The main idea of his article is that gossiping is closely related to the way primates groom each other. As monkeys have learned to expand their groups and groom more individuals, so have people learned to gossip in order to maintain relationships in an expanded network.

Here is an outline of Michael S. Gazzaniga’s attitudes towards gossip:

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