Joan Kelly Hall UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA Oye Oye lo que Ustedes no Saben: Creativity, Social Power, and Politics in the Oral Practice of Chismeando People in interaction are in a continual state of engagement in socioculturally framed activities. Our participation in these practices involves our knowledge and use of generic-specific linguistic resources, the instantiations of which move between the expected and the creative. The focus of this article is the locally situated nature of such interplay in the oral practice of chismeando (gossiping) by a group of Dominican women. Specifically I focus on one participant's strategic, creative use of some of the features to transform the nature of her involvement in the intragroup practice. Her actions are dis- cussed in terms of the social powers they engender and the politics of her participation. I suggest that such attention to the everyday experiences of a group helps build an understanding not only of the linguistic and paralin- guistic articulations of the practices themselves but, and certainly more importantly, of the socwhistorical lives of the people who construct and participate in them. W hen we engage in interaction with others who are a part of our sociocultural world, our usage of the linguistic conventions avail- able to us reflects our place in that world and serves as an active agent in the maintenance and/or transformation of our social position and our relationship with coparticipants. Our choice of a particular linguistic Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 3(l):75-98. Copyright © 1993, American Anthropological Association. 75