Me To Who 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.

Goffman referred to society as a play, and that we are all as individuals, actors in this play, or in the drama of everyday life. The expected ways of behaving, or social norms are the script, for example, greeting someone with ‘Good morning’ is expected. He suggests that the roles we carry out are simply a performance

Erving Goffman is considered the most influential American Socialist of the twentieth century. His ability to observe individuals and make sense of those observations is what he became most recognised for. His research focuses primarily on the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, framing of experience and social stigmas. He is best sighted for his study of symbolic interaction. Published in 1956, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ focuses on the subject of the self not so much as a singular and fixed entity but as a contingent response to a social context. It was the first book published which identifies face to face interaction as a concept of social studies. Through his writings Goffman uses theatrical imagery in order to depict the fundamentals of human and social interaction. The core principles derived from this are referred to as ‘The Dramaturgical Model of Social Life. This was a term developed by Goffman, which uses the metaphor of the theatre to better our understanding of social interaction. It illustrates how we as individuals in our everyday lives are referred to as actors

In this analogy, Goffman likens social interactions to those of actors performing on a stage. This analysis presents the idea that people’s everyday lives can be examined and better understood as resembling performers in a theater on a stage. With this idea, we present ourselves in various situations and therefore are putting on a performance (Allan 2014). Through the presentation of self, or impression management, social media allows everyone to utilize the presentation of their character, or self, to the fullest. Social media allows the rare opportunity for its users to emphasize and de-emphasize certain sign vehicles allowing us to only show a “highlight reel” or the most positive and appealing side of our “self”. In his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman explains this specific orchestration

This week, we talked about the development of the self. The most interesting readings for me was “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” by Erving Goffman. In this piece, Goffman discusses the dramaturgical theory of social interaction, which is the view that we put on a social facade in our daily lives, as if we are all actors in a theatrical performance.

The sociological perspective of dramaturgy is associated with Irving Goffman (1922 – 1982) who developed the concept in his book The Presentation Of The Self In Everyday Life (1959). Using theatre as an extended metaphor, dramaturgy explains the everyday interactions that uphold social reality. Life is like a play, and like actors in a play, people perform roles, working in teams to create the social world, like scenes in a play. This provides functional institutions of work, school, home, hospitals and other official bodies that constitute society. Social ‘performances’ are reliant on team-members understanding their role in the group and the aim of the scenario. Someone who undermines or disrupts a performance, by revealing hidden

It is how we present our self in everyday life and the reasons we act the way we do. Reasons that may affect how we present ourselves are the kind stage we’re on, role performance, role conflicts, and role strain. “The difference between role and status is that you occupy a status, but you play a role” (Linton 1936). Although statuses are macrosociology based, there is still confusion between roles and statuses. Goffman believed that there were stages in which we performed our assigned roles such as front stage and back stage. The front stage is wherever we deliver our lines for example, taking the role of your occupation. The back stage is a place we can relax, have some privacy, and reflect from the front stage. For example, being in your bedroom not having to worry about a thing and being able to discuss what happened on the front stage. This can affect how we present ourselves because when we’re in the front stage we’re putting up in act to present our self to whoever our audience is. Whereas in the back stage we have no one to put on a show for and we can relax and let loose. Role performance is similar with role conflict because a role performance is a certain interpretation that you give your role. For example, I can play the role as a good student and turn in all my assignments in on time, score high on

Goffman is usually described as ‘dramaturgical’; that is, it is an approach based on an analogy with the theatre, with its front and backstage regions. However, Goffman is not suggesting that the social world really is a stage, but that, using the dramaturgical analogy, we can study certain aspects of it and learn more about why people behave in ways they do. (Giddens: 268: 2009). In The Presentation of Everyday Life (1959), Goffman outlined a conceptual framework in which any occasion of face-to-face interaction can be interpreted as a theatrical performance. Expanding the ideas of Kenneth Burke, who pioneered a ‘dramatist’ approach. Burke identifies five elements that have to be taken account of in any discussion or analysis of

In the process of emphasizing the centrality of avoiding embarrassment as a guide for social interaction, Goffman dismisses the analysis of emotion and feelings involved at an internal level. A fact touched on by author Arlie Hochschild(1979), who uses an interactionist perspective to explain that focusing on external impressions, such as body demeanor and appearances takes away from inner reactions at a deeper level. Here direct management of feelings challenges the concept of acting. Therefore, while we do ultimately react in accordance to our roles and do so with poise, how we manage to control the self to do this is followed by our feelings, which is an internal reaction. Hochschild’s(1983),work in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling discusses what she considers is key in understanding social interaction and impression management. Taking from Konstantin Stanislavski 's concept of 'method acting ', Hochschild forms the concept of 'deep acting '. She illustrates the concept of impression management through 'deep acting’ that is different from Goffman 's notion of acting. In deep acting, the individual can manage their impression on others by managing how they feel. Here the actor has transpired into the character to a level where they are no longer acting but reacting to their surroundings. In deep acting, the individual relies on their demeanor to act a certain way in a given situation. She explains this process as relying on past experiences and our

“Ahhh, yes. It is a little chilly in here, isn’t it.” He said with a massive grin on his face that revealed perfect teeth that were whiter than snow. “but there’s a reason for that.”

Standing backwards in an elevator is considered “abnormal” in the conventional social setting, mostly because it involves violating a social norm and observing the reactions I would receive. I got various reactions ranging from laughing to concern. Before completing this experiment, I believed that people riding the elevator would be too concerned with their activities to even notice my abnormal behavior. The significance of social norms is so pervasive in society that they inherently dictate the relative behavior of members of society. Me standing the wrong way changed the way some people felt in the elevator they started to feel uncomfortable because my actions went against the social norm, which is standing facing the door, and anything that goes against the social norm is deemed weird or abnormal. This experiment centered on Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy. Dramaturgy is the ideas that our daily interactions resemble an unending play in which people are actors. Dramaturgy revolves on the idea that since birth, we are thrust onto a stage called daily life, and that our socialization consists of rehearsing assigned roles from other members of society. We enact our assigned roles in the company of others, who are in turn acting out their roles in communication with us.

The impressions that we give off in a situation can be part of a setting that Goffman refers to as the “front stage” (22). This stage consists of

While in society we attempt to portray ourselves a certain way in the presence of others, Evering Goffman would deem this act a “performance”, meaning people give off certain impressions to obtain a certain look they are “supposed” to uphold. Goffman would argue, “we do not as a matter of fact lead our lives”, but society makes it so we “live in inference” of the people before us and around us (139). By portraying a certain performance to an individual, the performer is seeking a specific outcome by “giving the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them a specific response”. This is described as a “calculated” mind-set, meaning people may enter themselves into a situation expecting a certain outcome (141). Overall the performer has a mindset of putting on a show for his given audience, which is driven by the way one is supposed to be portrayed in society.

In this essay I will outline and assess the dramaturgical approach of Ervin Goffman while considering how Goffman’s ideas could be applied to an everyday situation. Erving Goffman (1922–1982) was a micro-sociologist and he outlines his idea of the dramaturgical approach in his book called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis of social interaction is where he describes face-to-face interactions on a daily basis. Goffman analyses social life and social interactions through a metaphor of the theatre, examining the ways in which people present themselves to each other in different situations, he argues, the world is much more like a stage.

"When I seemed Danny last night. She was feeling so good like someone spiked her drink." Lucas