What is really Grapevine Communication?

Question

What is grapevine communication? I don't know whether it has positive or negative connotations. Can anyone tell me the details of it?

Thanks in advance

This does not seem to be a question about learning English as outlined in our help center: Help Center > Asking. — Em., Oct 12 '16 at 06:58
if my question is irrelevant then I'll remove my post. sorry — user97750, Oct 12 '16 at 07:00
I can't find an option in mobile apps to remove my Question if you help me to find that option. — user97750, Oct 12 '16 at 07:09
I think that this is a reasonable question if you remove the "useful" bit, which I have done. @user97750, I hope that the question still matches what you want to know. — JavaLatte, Oct 12 '16 at 08:05

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '16 at 07:44

11

I think you're referring to the idiom 'through the grapevine' which means

Through or via an informal means of communication or information, especially gossip

Whether it is useful or not depends on the culture of your workplace/surroundings, and not something we at ELL can answer.

answered Oct 12 '16 at 07:44

Grobby78

Well-known pop song it may be, but I would hesitate to recommend it on a site for English language learners! "I heard it through the grapevine / Not much longer would you be mine" : this is Yoda-speak, not English. – TonyK Oct 12 '16 at 17:07
@TonyK - I wouldn't call it Yoda-speak, I'd call it rephrasing to fit the meter and rhyming scheme of the song. (Any resemblance to Yoda-speak at the end of such wordsmithing would be coincidental.) – J.R. Oct 12 '16 at 18:46
Now that useful has been edited to positive or negative, I think we can answer that: it's situationally dependent. If we are talking about backbiting and gossip, then "grapevine" communication can be destructive. However, not all of it needs to be. "I heard through the grapevine that they might reopen the café across the street" is likely just fine. – J.R. Oct 12 '16 at 18:50
1

@J.R.: I was trying to be polite. To this day I can't understand how professional song-writers (Whitfield and Strong) could come up with such a clunky line. It ruins the song for me. – TonyK Oct 12 '16 at 19:10

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