From Rumour to Reality: Grapevine Communication and Identity (Re)Formation in Selected Indian Folktales

Abstract

Grapevine communication refers to communication taking place through informal or unofficial channels within interpersonal, group, or organizational context. Such informal channels usually are full of gossip or rumors passing from one person to many or vice versa. Single strand chain, gossip chain, probability chain, and cluster chain are the primary routes of communication within a grapevine network that play a vital role in building, breaking, and rebuilding people’s perceptions and interpretations about self and others. Thus, grapevine communication influences in shaping individuals’ views, opinions, and identities. My study tries to understand how various networks of grapevine communication influence and shape individuals’ identities and help people in creating meaning of life as well as cope with life’s difficulties. For my analysis, I choose two Indian folktales, because folktales are timeless classics which represent a vivid description of personal realities without taking stringent views. The folktales selected are: 1. “A Plague Story” from A.K. Ramanujan’s Folktales from India (1991) and 2. “The Bowl of Thenthuk: Hemis, Ladakh” from the text Curious Tales from the Himalayas by Shaguna Gahilote & Prarthana Gahilote (2017). My analysis is dependent on anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar’s seminal work Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (1996) where gossip is considered as an essential social and survival skill for human’s evolutionary process.