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Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution
of Language. By Robin Dunbar (Cambridge Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1996; paperback edition, 1998) $14.00
paper.
The ‘grooming’ of this book’s title is when primates leisurely
go over each other’s fur and skin, picking and pinching
in a practice that produces not only mutual pleasure but
also social bonding. The ‘gossip’ is supposed to be what
happens when humans do much the same thing with language.
And the ‘evolution’ gets us from one stage to the other
through what Dunbar summarizes as his four key points: “1)
among primates, social group size appears to be limited
by the size of the species’ neocortex; 2) the size of human
social networks appears to be limited for similar reasons
to a value of around 150; 3) the time devoted to social
grooming by primates is directly related to group size because
it plays a crucial role in bonding groups; and finally 4)
it is suggested that language evolved among humans to replace
social grooming because the grooming time required by our
large groups made impossible demands on our time” (192).
As such, the argument draws on numerous disciplines and
sets of data, stitched into a patchwork where hard evidence
becomes difficult to separate from anecdotes. For example,
the data on skull sizes supports the reasonable-sounding
hypothesis that the neocortex is directly related to the
size of the social group, since a bigger brain is needed
to remember complex social relations. And yet none of that
particular relationship would seem to be strictly necessary
for the further arguments that relate the sizes of social
groups to the evolution of language, where the restricting
factor is considered to be available time and not a limited
neocortex. So whether or not we want to predict social group
size from skull size is actually of little consequence for
where Dunbar wants to lead us. Worse, when we approach the
thick of the real argument, the evidence for fixing the
optimal social group for humans at about 150 is of the most
anecdotal kind that would be more at home in an English
pub. But then, not even that weak playing with numbers is
really essential for Dunbar’s main argument, which might
yet survive such absurdities.
So could human language have replaced grooming? This central
hypothesis is important because it involves a vision of
what language is all about; it may stand or fall on the
strength of that vision. The idea that the fundamental role
of language is gossip, as the social equivalent of grooming,
accords priority to the maintenance of social networks,
especially as opposed to what Dunbar terms the information-oriented
“herd of bison down by the lake” theory (79). And since
the latter theory is recognized as masculine (it enables
men to hunt together), the gossip theory might as well be
feminine, if not quite feminist. And this could indeed seem
mildly revolutionary.
Tellingly, Dunbar makes no claim to be a linguist, sociolinguist
or linguistic anthropologist. Indeed, when he makes claims
such as the supposed universality of subject-verb-object
order (105), one might doubt his grasp of quite basic linguistics.
Further, even his main terms of reference tend to come unstuck
when ‘true language’ is apparently defined in terms of the
‘exchange of information’ (151), so that gossip in fact
creates and exchanges information about group membership,
especially as concerns the exclusion of free-riders. This
of course defeats any attempt to oppose information-based
theories. In fact, the simple cooperation theory that Dunbar
is using is already at the basis of much discourse theory,
relevance theory, general pragmatics, network theory and
the sociolinguistics of conversation. In none of these areas
would anyone be particularly surprised about the claim that
language promotes mutual back-scratching, although some
might be bemused that a researcher should need to recruit
ideas about brains and group sizes to make the point.
In sum, this is an engaging farrago of ideas and anecdotes
that brings little of substance beyond some lively interdisciplinary
gossip. Yet Dunbar is not content to leave his performace
on that level. At the end of the book we find a few confused
and painfully pessimistic gestures at the internet and globalized
communications, which then crystallize into some kind of
prophetic message for the future: “communities of common
interest no longer exist. We are exposed to the risk of
exploitation by strangers” (202). So more gossip is apparently
needed in order to keep out the invading but unnamed free-riders.
Unfortunately, as Dunbar roams around from discipline to
discipline, he might himself be seen as a free-rider destined
to be excluded by the inner common interests of academic
villages. One wonders why Harvard bothered to back the risk.
- Last update
20 July 1999
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