Dramaturgy Class Analysis

In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959) focuses on the self as a staged production in which people actively present themselves to different audiences one encounters. To bolster his conceptualization, Goffman used an interesting metaphor of “all the world’s a stage” (1959, 254). This, he terms as a “dramaturgical approach” (Goffman 1959, 240) in which an actor puts on a show for others; drawing analogies between human behaviors and the theater. Goffman (1959) likens the individual to an actor on stage performing for and with other individuals involved in the situation. Three types of space exist for the actor to perform on, to enact the self, and to interact with others: the front stage, the backstage, the outer region. Goffman (1959) utilizes specific dramaturgical terms such as performance, teams, front and back regions, sign-vehicles, and highlights the process of dramatic realization. These terms will be discussed in the following sections.

Interaction is an important concept in sociology, and it has been studied from multiple different perspectives. Both Erving Goffman and Arlie Hochschild have made notable contributions to the sociological study of interaction. According to Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, interaction can be explained through a dramaturgical model. Within the dramaturgical model, interactions are portrayed as performances, as if a particular social environment is a stage, and the people in that social environment are actors (Goffman). Erving Goffman’s sociological interpretation of interaction is extended by Arlie Hochschild in her piece Feelings Management. Hochschild focuses specifically on performances that are put on in the workplace. Acting in the workplace has become a necessity in the service industry because in many cases, people must act warm and welcoming in order to keep their jobs. This method of acting happy and upbeat in the service industry is called emotional labor. However, as Hochschild explains, emotional labor can cause a strain on service workers, especially when they must act cheerful, even when they feel upset and distressed. The discrepancy between a person’s true emotions and their feigned emotional state is known as emotive dissonance. Continued emotive dissonance can lead to spillover, in which a person’s true emotions come out because they can no longer hold back these emotions. Though emotional labor began in the workplace, Hochschild

In “Presentations of Self in Everyday Life,” Goffman is constantly explaining how everyday life is a dramaturgy. A dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and essentially the production of a theatrical play. A social situation is much like a play. Every play has a stage, actors, a script, a set, rehearsals, and practices. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the encounter, the script is the social norms of the social encounter, and the set is the environment where the encounter takes place. It takes practices and

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare may have written these words in As You Like It in 1600, but Erving Goffman truly defined the phrase with his dramaturgical theory. Dramaturgical analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. Unlike actors though, who use a script telling them how to behave in every scene, real life human interactions change depending upon the social situation they are in. We may have an idea of how we want to be perceived, and may have the foundation to make that happen. But we cannot be sure of every interaction we will have throughout the day, having to ebb and flow with the conversations and situations as they happen.

Goffman’s theory of human interaction is still present and society still views interaction through Goffman’s lens. Goffman said there were two main forms of interaction, focused and unfocused interaction. He equated individuals who interacted with each other as actors. These actors acted out their roles and read their scripts (dialogue) on the front stage or backstage of their own life; what and how they each present themselves to others how are stranger or acquaintances, or how they interact with individuals they are closer to.

Erving Goffman was a sociologist known for developing the symbolic interaction and dramaturgical theory perspective. The dramaturgical theory is a social psychological perspective that studies human behavior and social interaction in terms of the analogy of the theater. This perspective is also related to symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is a theory based on interaction and communication, facilitated by many different words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired various meanings. Dramaturgical theorist focus on how people manipulate various aspects of themselves and their settings to influence how others define and respond to them. In this perspective, “the self” is constructed of the various roles that one acquires, in order to present their various selves in ways that sustain particular impressions to their audiences. “The self” is a private possession established in and reflective of an individual’s personality, which includes ones values, beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions. In addition, a person’s “self” is acquired through social relationships and is a structurally fundamental process that may change due to various situations. As humans interact with one another they are placed in social categories based on their attributes and actions. These assessments are primarily based on ones knowledge of roles.

Sociologist Erving Goffman developed the concept of dramaturgy which is the idea that life is like a never-ending play in which people are actors. Goffman believed that from the day we are born, we are thrust onto a stage called everyday life and that our socialization consists of learning how to play our assigned “self’s” from other people. He used the imagery of theater to portray the importance of human and social action and interaction through his dramaturgical model of social life. We choose what “self” to act as while interacting with people who are in turn doing the exact thing. He believed that no matter what we do, we are playing out some “self” on the stage of life. The self, according to Goffman, is a sense of who one is; a dramatic

Goffman emphasises on the presentation of self, how self is a product of scene. Who you are is who you successfully convince your audience to be. Erving’s version of dramaturgy is more concerned about one’s day to day interactions. He believes there is a self: the version favorable to others (frontstage). This self can be the person who is meeting their significant other’s family for the first time.

The second element of dramaturgy is presenting the self. In presenting the self to others, one of the people is the actor and others people are the audience. According to Erving Goffman, social life is a drama or a stage play. In this “social life” drama, we got a lot of setting which is approved behaviours and the setting is also known as ‘the rule of the game’.

The sociological concept ‘dramaturgy’, was developed by Irving Goffman (1922 – 1982) and initially used in his book The Presentation of the Self (1959). The concept was also a feature of subsequent works Behavior in Public Places (1963) and Interaction Rituals (1967), where the focus was on interaction and social scene rather than self-presentation and identity work. Dramaturgy uses the theatre as an extended metaphor to explain how people perform a variety of social roles, like actors in a play, and that society is made up of groups of players working together to up hold various social realities and functional institutions such as work, school, home, medical, legal or leisure. The two key components of this theory are ‘front and back’

The AHS Drama Department is highly well-known for the amazing plays and musicals they perform each year. The costumes, the set, and the actors turn the script into a reality for the audience. Many freshmen dream to perform on the Performing Arts Center (PAC). From the Intermediate Drama Class to the Advanced Drama Department (ADD), each one will teach students about drama and the infatuation that is needed for it. The journey just begins with an audition, and the knowledge of what you need for it.

Burker’s als used Dramatistic pentad the critics can used to discern the motive of a speaker or writer by labeling five key elements:. Dramatistic pentad and the five element was used to help understand communication events. Pentad element can also be applied in our day to day lives. The five elements of human drama, which Burke called the pentad was used to help critic to understand the rhetorical message. Act, scene, agent, agency and purpose. The five element of dram that can help audiences to understand a story. The scene is the place where the action of the act take place, the location, the time of the event. The Act is the main meaningful part of a drama, the act motivated, entertainment the audience, action such as moving or speaking.

United States Constitution, either memorizing it in a government class in grade school or claiming the

Goffman’s dramaturgical approach is a metaphorical technique used to explain how an individual presents an “idealized” rather than authentic version of herself. The metaphor considers life as a stage for activity. Individuals thus engage in performances, which Goffman (1959) defines as “activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observer.” (Hogan

Now, Goffmans in his book - The presentation of self in everyday life - mentioned and described about how we present ourselves in front of others in our daily life. The main aspect of his work is called “Dramaturgical Approach”, where the root word is drama. Goffman in his book essentially said that the world is a stage to lay the foundation of Goffman’s assertions about how we act and interact in social settings. Goffman says that the human are active and knowledgeable being and human are not passive creature to waiting around to things that happens to us. But, the knowledge that we have that helps us to decide to behave and in that respect we are active in the process of behavior and the process of developing to the society. He also believes