Is Erving Goffman's Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life?

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.

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)

Erving Goffman is one of the most important American sociological theorist in the second half of the century and was also influenced by Durkheim, Freud, and Simmel in his work. He is well known for his analysis of human interaction which is now called “dramaturgical analysis”. Dramaturgical Analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. For example, Goffman uses terms like “front”, “setting”, and “performance” when explaining his theory. The front is also known as the expressive equipment, intentional or unintentional kind employed by the performer. The setting is also part of the front and involves the physical layout like

Before we discuss Hochschild’s surface and deep acting, let us review one of the classic sociological accounts of the presentation of self, for the theatrical model of social roles has a long heritage that Hochschild is drawing on. Particularly influential is Erving Goffman’s 1959 work, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. By ‘presentation of self’, Goffman (1959, pp. 9-18) means the performance that people put on, for the benefit of both other people and themselves. This performance is based on how the individuals want to be perceived by others and themselves; guided by motives, it is an attempt to control the responses from others that reflect on the self. Such performances can be classified into two situations (Goffman, 1959, pp. 28-29). In the first

In his first book, The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life, author Erving Goffman presents the metaphor of theater to explain the natural and manufactured pattern of human behavior. According to Goffman, in order to properly live and operate within society, every individual’s primary objective is to modify their actions and performance in a way that leaves a notably striking and favorable impression on those around him. The best way to understand human behavior and action is to view individuals as actors preforming on a social stage who are actively creating a positive impression of themselves for the benefit of an audience. Goffman is getting at the idea that people consciously present society with a “front” to provide a certain image of

Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist and writer. He was made a president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known involvement and contribution to the social sciences is his theory of symbolic interaction and dramaturgy, which began with his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. This report explains that individuals have the ability to choose their stage, the character they play, and the costume they wear in specific social situations (Goffman, 1959). He also worked with the total institution model, and used it to construct his studies, mostly in Asylums. A total institution is a residence and workplace for similar people, who are cut off from the wider society for an amount of time, and who altogether, lead an enclosed form of life (Frank, 2002). This ties in with his next book about mental institutions, where he theorized that if people are treated, as they are a societal burden and placed in an institution with others, they

Erving Goffman was a sociologist who studied and analyzed social interaction. He took special interest in explaining how people live their lives as if they were actors performing on stage. He looked at the world as if he were a “director” seeing what goes on in everyday life. He called this observation of the world dramaturgical analysis. He applied terms to this explanation, which include the concepts of status and role. He referred the “part in a play” as the status, and then the “script” is the role. His claim of presentation of self was used to describe “a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others.” Goffman thought that when any individual is around others, they

(Cite class notes?) I am currently enrolled in this class, and we have covered concepts surrounding the front stage and back stage self. The front stage self is the self that individuals present to others, while the backstage self is often what is seen behind closed doors. Mary Waid, the instructor, applied this theory of Goffman to an episode of the science fiction show, Black Mirror, titled “Nosedive” (Wright 2016). In the episode, the main character, Lacie is rated by society via cellular devices.

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.

According to Goffman, social interactions are very similar to the interactions involved in theatre. For example, he compares people in everyday life to actors onstage, acting out their designated role, or cluster of duties, rights, and obligations associated with a particular social position or status. The audience consists of individuals observe the performers and critique their performance. In social interaction, like in theatre, there is the front region where actors perform for their audience, and then there is the backstage stage, where individuals are not seen by the audience and can truly be themselves.

He also implies how an individual will be focussed on making a favourable show of him (a good impression) which gives another explanation to why humans can be seen as actors in situations of social interaction, they act how they think the audience (observers) want them to act. To summarise his chapter on presentation Goffman’s primary assumption is that individuals differ not by their specific qualities, but by the situations they find themselves in to which they adopt different ‘roles’ to perform for the “observer”.

Goffman’s Dramaturgical approach theory was inspired by William Shakespeare’s writings in which Shakespeare say’s “totus mundus agit histrionem,” which are Latin for “All the world is a theatre”. In his theory, Goffman views individuals as actors in society where “interactions are viewed as performances” (Barnhart, A.D.,) the individual attempts to create an impression on the world in which these impressions “exist regardless of the mental state of the individual” (Barnhart, A.D.,) meaning, how the individual acts is not entirely voluntary but also involuntary. Social structure refers to “ the people in a society considered as a system organized by a characteristic pattern of relationships” (the free dictionary) To explain social

Erving Goffman revolves his view of the human life around the belief that we are all actors who have both a front stage behavior and a back stage behavior. From an early age we have become skilled actors and move in and out of roles with precision such as with our family and friends. We follow the formal societal rules when we are on the front stage reciting a script, playing a role. This would include going to work, presenting ourselves as the person we should uphold to take part in society. On the other side, Goffman says our back stage behavior is informal, as we'd act when we are

Ever since I took drama classes in high school I felt that we always put on an act. A show almost, that we put out for the people we interact with daily. Erving Goffman, “Canadian-American Sociologist” (Encyclopedia In., 2017) also believed this, he compared social interactions to the theater, where individuals take a particular role. According to Goffman this “theatrical metaphor consists of a stage, actors, and an audience” (Crossman, 2014). It also consists of the onstage, backstage and offstage. These three stages show different behavior on a person.