The Sociological Perspective Of Dramaturgy Is Associated With Irving Goffman

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

The theory of dramaturgy is considered a micro theory, under the category of “interpretive”, which also includes interactionism, ethomethodology, and phenomolohy.

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

Pretend you are playing the role of a character named Jordan, while discussing Erving Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy. Jordan finally made it. Jordan finally graduated university and has been lucky enough to receive an offer for an interview at the institution that he had been working towards his entire university career, an interview at the top law firm in all of Toronto. Now it is time to prepare. It is time for Jordan to show the firm that he is meant to be there. To show the firm that this position was meant for him, he must be the best version of himself. Jordan is competing against hundreds of other university graduates, but he must show them that he is the one. Jordan’s first impression matters, he must show them the qualities that they want to see to ensure that he receives the position at the law firm.

Finally the last element which Burke discusses is agency which is the theoretical points, he claims that the whole lot is realised through language. From these elements Goffman then went on to develop his own ‘dramaturgical’ investigations based on six themes: the performance, the team, the region, discrepant roles, communication out of the character and impression management. Nothing of Goffman’s dramaturgical world is quite what it seems. Rather, people are all portrayed as performers enacting rehearsed lines and roles in places that are carefully constructed in order to maximise the potential of deception. He then goes on to suggest that as performers people both ‘give’ and ‘give off’ impressions. It has been suggested that Goffman’s dramaturgical world is thus one of misdirection in which general suspicion is necessary; he developed an interest in espionage practices mainly because he recognised these as extensions of everyday behaviour. Goffman then went on to identify five moves in social interaction which are the ‘unwitting’, the ‘naïve’, the ‘covering’, the ‘uncovering’ and finally the ‘counter uncovering’ move (1959: 11-27). Each of these moves is designed either to achieve some advantage directly, or to reveal the strategies of other players. These moves are used in social worlds, or as Goffman called them, ‘situated activity systems’. Each is regulated by adopted norms known by system’s members. Rather than concentrating on the production of meanings, the

Within dystopian literature, identity is something that can be seen as an individual’s most core and precious element. Exposed against a scarcity of freedom in self-expression, we can begin to fully appreciate and understand the importance in the role of identity as well as its robustness. The role of identity and its manipulation is often explored within dystopian literature to exemplify weaknesses in human psychology as well as to destroy false images of strength and superiority that we apply to ourselves. In both The Road and

The purpose of this assignment is to record your life for one day and critically discuss how you are an actor in society; how you affect your social surroundings; and, how your daily life is shaped and constrained by society. This will allow you engage with many of the sociological concepts reviewed to-date including newer concepts such as impression management, stage theory and emotional labor.

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.

This view gives us a deeper understanding of behaviours as performances. A personal example of looking at a performativity culture and analyzing it, is the roles people play in everyday life. The role of a

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.

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

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.