“Somebody Told Me,” or How Reputations Spread

Abstract

This chapter deals with the communicative aspect of reputation. It talks about how reputation circulates and through which social and linguistic mechanisms it can be stabilized. A reputation can be ephemeral while at other times it seems set in stone. Gossip, rumors, and informational cascades contribute to the background noise that characterizes the universal human discussion of who did what to whom. The chapter examines the essentially communicative dimension of reputation, such as its existence not only in the eyes of others but within the cascade of communicated words and speeches that others share among themselves. Reputations can occasionally be consciously and successfully manipulated. But this does little to reduce the general anxiety and uncertainty stemming from an ungovernable transmission and propagation of reputations, the risks of defamation, and the difficulty of restoring a reputation once it has been blackened by rumors and gossip.