Research has shown that two-thirds of human conversation is taken up not with discussion of the cultural or political problems of the day, not heated debates about films we've just watched or books we've just finished reading, but plain and simple gossip(说闲话).
Language is our greatest treasure as a species, and what do we frequently do with it? We gossip. About others' behavior and private lives, such as who's doing what with whom, who's in and who's out and why; how to deal with difficult social situations involving children, lovers, and colleagues.
The reasons for people's preference for gossiping has become a heated topic recently. According to Professor Robin Dunbar, gossip is one of vital issues for human beings. He suggests that we don't spend two-thirds of our time gossiping just because we can talk, on the contrary, language evolved ( 进(化) specifically to allow us to gossip.
Dunbar arrived at his theory by studying the behavior of monkeys. By means of brushing the fur for each other, monkeys form groups with other individuals from whom they can get support when they encounter some kind of conflict within the group or attack from outside it.
As we human beings evolve from a particular branch of the animal family, Dunbar concludes that at one time in our history we did much the same. Grouping together made sense because the bigger the group, the greater the protection it provided; on the other hand, the bigger the group, the greater the stresses of living close to others. Brushing the fur helped to ease the pressure and calm everybody down.
But as the groups got bigger and bigger, the a mount of time spent in brushing activities also had to be extended to maintain its effectiveness. Clearly, a more efficient method was needed, and thus language evolved as a kind of verbal way which allowed humans to develop relationship with ever-larger groups by exchanging in for mation over a wider network of individuals than would be possible by one-to-one physical contact.
