Essay on Presentation of Self Claim

Facial expressions -The human face is extremely expressive, able to express countless emotions without saying a word. And unlike some forms of nonverbal communication, facial expressions are

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

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

Examine the view that Erving Goffman’s work focuses on forms of social interaction but ignores social structure.

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.

Erving Goffman is a sociologists who is known as a great approach, he understands how the dramaturgical perspective can lead to a different way of thinking about the social life, experiences and your personal life. I can easily understand what he meant, also I felt the same way about my social life or my experiences. Social life can be different, but even mine, so people have different experiences. Everyone’s life is not perfect

"Self-presentation is the behavior and information we offer to others, almost always so that we can show ourselves in a favorable light. It’s how we shake a hand, smile, make eye contact. It’s the information we provide—and don’t provide. Self-presentation involves “tactics.” And those tactics often involve fakery: We smile when we’re not happy; we act interested when we’re bored; we stay awake when we’d like to crawl up on the table in the conference room and go to sleep. To be quite honest, we lie.

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

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.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr, better known as "The Great Imposer" truly represents what it means to present the self. Presenting the self, also sometimes called impression management management, is the process through which we try to control the impressions people form of us(Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2015). Demara was able to present himself is certain ways to portray a specific image of who he was trying to be.

Goffman, E. 1959. ‘Performances’ chapter 1, from the presentation of self in everyday life. London: penguin.

Goffman was the first to introduce the topic of dramaturgy in his work. Dramaturgy is his idea that life is a play. The people are actors and the every day world around us is our stage. (1959, p.13) He uses the image of a theatre performance to express the behaviour of people in everyday social interactions. Although not always aware of it, every individual in a social situation is assigned a role in the performance. Every individual obtains a role in social interaction and the audience observes and reacts to the performance. Goffman discussed the three different regions of performance as the front stage, the back stage and off stage. Each region has a particular impact on one’s performance.

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.