Spread of Rumor in the Vision of Cultural Poetics

Rumor is not only a cultural phenomenon, but also a cultural poetics which resembles the Neo-historicism because of its easiness and speed in spreading, its contradiction, and its coverage of multi-discipline. Rumor poetics combines the legendary past from mouth to mouth and anecdotes with the present social atmosphere to form a new social text and to talk with reality by means of rumor. Among all the definitions of rumor both in western and eastern world, most of them paid too much attention to the sources of rumor, whether the rumor comes from an exact source or not. However, it is the process of rumor spreading that should be emphasized since rumor will undergo an evolution in the process of spreading no matter whether it is true in its source or not. Rumor's deflection means the information changes during the process of spreading. Therefore rumor is information that has been transferred or deflected. These transformations or deflections, done by listeners, are very apparent in their nature of ideology. This definition can also be illustrated from the angles of the target audience, psychology, route and receiver of spreading.