Erving Goffman Focuses on Form of Social Interaction

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.

Goffman refers to the act of an individual presenting themselves in front of an audience or a specific set of observers a ‘performance’. The performers convey impressions and information to others in order to support the identity they are presenting, some of the factors engrained in the performance are an appropriate setting, manners, appearance, and front. Goffman refers to a front stage, back stage, as well as an off stage, these regions are meant to reflect how an ‘actor’ may act when in front of different audiences or no audience at all. Goffman touches upon how an

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

In The Presentation of Everyday Life, Goffman lays out the seven elements that create a performance: belief in the role that is being played, the front or ‘mask’, dramatic realization, idealization, maintenance of expressive control, misrepresentation, and deception/mystification. Using the simple description of someone interviewing for a job, we can see that “As he seeks to assume the role of an ideal employee (idealization), he tries (in his performance) to convey a certain image about himself through his dress, his speech, and his expressions (his front), emphasizing those things that he wants the interviewers to know (dramatic realization). He has to maintain control over these expressions throughout the interview (maintenance of expressive control). Any lapse in his performance in that role (misrepresentation) may lead to him revealing those things that he has been trying to conceal (mystification).” (Corbin, 2012)

Functionalist Erving Goffman studies the sociological approach of Dramaturgy in his book ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ (Goffman, 1959), he built his theory based on earlier work completed by Kenneth Burke. However there are distinct differences in features of the theory between Burke and Goffman as Burke believed that life was in fact a literal

The social sciences are a relatively new branch of science and with this youth comes complexities and growing pains. The evolution from looking strictly at history, to applying natural science research methods to the stratified version of research methods now utilized in the social sciences has progressed organically over time. This is a very interesting phenomenon since the founding fathers oscillated between history, the present-day’s ethnographic research as well as the views of their contemporaries. This leads one to ask if the time period in which sociology came about lead to its birth? Or were these founding fathers generally interested in the social ties that bind us together? I believe it is a combination of both that

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.

The idea of not expecting too much led to Goffman adopting a naturalistic view of social

Van Krieken R, Smith P, Habibis D, Mcdonald K, Haralambos M, Holborn M, Sociology Themes and Perspe

Erving Goffman developed the concept that made us understand that life is like play(drama) which has a never-ending and it involves entities of actors, props, writers etc. which involve scripts where individual acts. He further made us understands that our socialization is full of learning how to play a role that has been assigned from other people. In fact, he has brought to our understanding of a life where people act and socialize which consist of our assigned role from other people. Goffman believes that whatever we do, we are playing out some role on the on the stage of life and that comprises of behind the scenes actions and how people are being guided and directed by other individual and he named it front stage and back stage.

Collaboration among individuals and groups plays a crucial role in the creating a stable social structure. Academia, has had evolving views of how society is structure. Thomas Hobbes emphasized humane nature, and therefore social structure, in a ruthless state of conflict and competition. On the contrary, Durkheim highlighted the importance of solidarity among individuals in the creation of the social world. Nevertheless, following Simmel and Goffman demonstrated that solidarity and collaboration are not the only elements at play in producing social space. In fact, Georg Simmel explored the idea of competitions not has state of nature, but has instruments for shaping social relations and objectifying social values. Furthermore, Goffman established how competition is one of the major keys of social activity used for building face, or establishing an identity.Although both Simmel

Compare and contrast the views of Goffman and Foucault on how social oreder is produced.

There is not a day where my own life lacks social events. A basic day consists of going to work or school, completing homework, and attempting to have a social life with those who are important to me. Being able to manage my social self is a task worth reviewing using the sociological theory of Max Weber and Erving Goffman. Each decision made to manage my life pulls from Weber’s theory of action and rationality; moreover, each situation requires a bit of face by Goffman’s dramaturgy.

Erving Goffman sees self-presentation in six aspects, which are all related to the idea of life as a drama; persona, performance, staging, teams, role, personal style. According to Goffman, a persona is when someone wears various personality ‘masks’ depending on which roles they are undertaking, for example, when someone is with their friends the mask they wear defines them as a kind, friendly person whereas when they are with the family the mask will come off and their personality will change. I wear a mask when I’m with my friends and this portrays me as a friendly, outgoing character, whereas the mask I wear at home is loud, moody and unproductive.

Goffman devised the idea that when in case of an interaction, individuals are social actors who put up performances, projecting specific identities of themselves, usually aiming for the approval of others (Karp et. al., 2016). In the case of my interactions with fellow Bunz users, following social norms, I messaged the traders and presented my offer trying to present my best face (Karp et. al., 2016), so we could come up with a beneficial trade, these interactions corresponded with Goffman’s dramaturgical view. The dramaturgical view states that individuals systematically control the information they provide to others about themselves