summary of goffman the presentation of self in everyday life

The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-7

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a sociological study of the ways individuals encounter each other. Published in 1956 by Erving Goffman , it focuses on the relationship between an individual carrying out a particular role in society (what Goffman calls a “performance”) and those who are present but not participant (whom he calls “observers”) in the activity. While the text begins with a general introduction to Goffman’s methodology, with Chapter 1 solely an analysis of the individual performer, Goffman’s larger aim is to outline the various ways groups of performers (what he calls “performance teams” or “teams”) interact with themselves and with observers, with the aim of fostering a specific and clear impression on the viewers.

By focusing on the larger group dynamics within a given social setting , Goffman successfully accounts for various phenomena that are largely taken for granted or seen as unworthy of rigorous academic study: the economic, racial, and gendered relations between workers and their boss; the role played by architecture and space in the staging of a performance; the various techniques and habits cultivated by performers to avoid any disruption to the situation; and so forth. Moreover, Goffman classifies the more marginal actors and observers that one may come across in everyday social settings (or what he calls “discrepant roles”). Additionally, by focusing on the interaction within and between performance teams and their audience , Goffman provides a detailed description of the various ways any given performer is continuously shifting between different modes of communication, such as formal in the presence of an audience and informal in the presence of fellow performers.

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This discrepancy between communication styles allows Goffman to engage in an ethnography of the ways any given social interaction always contains more than what the audience simply experiences. Thus, we hear stories of kitchen staff who dry their clothes over the stoves, or stories of how workers gossip behind the back of a customer who frequents their place of business. It is only by focusing on every possible position within a social situation that one can account for all of these interactions that, from the vantage point of the audience or a customer, are kept largely out of view.

However, Goffman’s main point is how we should understand this notion of the “self.” For Goffman, we should remember that among the various social interactions we have only a daily basis, the performances we encounter are not identical to the individuals carrying out those roles. Rather, the self that is given by a performer is always the image of an individual who is better or worse than the ideal person for their role. Thus, Goffman concludes with two implications. First, we should be careful not to treat someone’s performance as a reflection of their moral character or as a summation of the whole of their being. Second, we should remind ourselves that the self is merely a product of everything that goes into sustaining and carrying out a performance. As Goffman writes, “The self is a product of all of these arrangements, and in all of its parts bears the marks of this genesis” (253).

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The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)

Erving goffman (1959): the presentation of self in everyday life.

By Jason Taylor

Introduction

Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was “arguably the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century” (Fine & Manning, 2003, p. 34). This summary will outline one of his earliest works – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , originally published in 1956. The book was published more widely in 1959 with some minor changes and in 1969, won the American Sociological Association’s MacIver Award (Treviño, 2003). It has been listed by the International Sociological Association (1998) as the tenth most important book of the last century.

Goffman (1959, p.12) introduces his “report” as “a sort of handbook” which details “one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied”. In it, he describes “a set of features… which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial”.

Goffman (1959) intends on providing a unique sociological perspective from which to view the social world. He names this perspective dramaturgical analysis. Elegantly intuitive, this perspective directs us to view the social world as a stage. Goffman is using the language of the theatre to describe social interaction. Much like on the stage, ‘actors’ take on ‘roles’ – they engage in a performance . There is an audience who views and interprets this performance. There are props and scripts. And there is a ‘front stage’ and a ‘backstage’.

Following the introduction, the book is broken down into six main chapters. These are:

• Performances
• Regions and Region Behaviour
• Discrepant Roles
• Communication out of Character
• The Arts of Impression Management

These six chapters outline the six ‘dramaturgical principles’ of Goffman’s theory (Fine & Manning, 2003; Manning, 1992). This section will outline some of the core aspects of each of these ‘dramaturgical principles’. The first principle (performances) will be the most detailed of the six, because it is the fundamental theoretical basis for Goffman’s (1959) overall concept. The additional five principles can be seen as supporting and building upon this underlying idea. Following from this fairly extensive summary of the book, a critical evaluation will discuss some of its main criticisms and consider why it remains an exceptionally influential piece of Sociology. Finally, we will end with some cautionary advice from Goffman on the scope and practicality of his theory.

1. Performances

A “performance” may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion that serves to influence in any way any of the other participants. (Goffman, 1959, p.26)

I have been using the term “performance” to refer to all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers . (Goffman, 1959, p. 32)

So, by ‘performance’, Goffman (1959) is referring to any activity by an individual in the presence of others which influences those others.

It is important to recognise that there are various situations, circumstances and settings within which a performance can take place. One of the most obvious, perhaps, is a job interview. In this case, the interviewee is likely presenting a version of themselves that they believe the interviewer values in their employees – well-mannered, confident (but not arrogant), respectful, hard-working, trustworthy, and so on. They may attempt to present these characteristics through the way they dress, their posture, their manner and tone of speaking, their body language, etc. Indeed, the interviewer will also be putting on a performance – perhaps restraining themselves so as not to reveal too much about how the interview is going or presenting an authoritative demeanour, for example. However, performances occur in more subtle settings and situations, too. When a couple go out to dinner, they present themselves in a certain way – both towards each other as well as the person serving them and to other diners. The way we dress, the way we speak, the facial expressions we make, our body language, all amount to a kind of performance.

Goffman (1959) suggests that performances are an essential aspect of how we “define the situation”:

When an individual enters the presence of others, they commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him already possessed. They will be interested in his general socio-economic status, his conception of self, his attitude toward them, his competence, his trustworthiness, etc. Although some of this information seems to be sought almost as an end in itself, there are usually quite practical reasons for acquiring it. Information about the individual helps to define the situation, enabling others to know in advance what he will expect of them and what they may expect of him. Informed in these ways, the others will know how best to act in order to call forth a desired response from him. (Goffman, 1959, p.1)

Essentially, the argument here is that social interaction requires performances from all actors involved in any social interaction in order to define and negotiate the situation we find ourselves in. Through our performances, we make claims about what the situation is, who we are, and what to expect from one another.

A word of caution here. Goffman (1959) is not necessarily implying that individuals are consciously deceiving one another or ‘faking it’… at least, not all of the time:

At one extreme, one finds that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality. When his audience is also convinced in this way about the show he puts on—and this seems to be the typical case—then for the moment at least, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled will have any doubts about the “realness” of what is presented. At the other extreme, we find that the performer may not be taken in at all by his own routine. This possibility is understandable, since no one is in quite as good an observational position to see through the act as the person who puts it on. Coupled with this, the performer may be moved to guide the conviction of his audience only as a means to other ends, having no ultimate concern in the conception that they have of him or of the situation. When the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term “sincere” for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance. (Goffman, 1959, pp.17-18)

Certainly then, an individual may intentionally and consciously put on a performance in order to gain in some way from a given situation. However, performances occur in any and all social interactions. The performer may well be convinced that the performance they are giving is not really a performance at all and instead may view it as an authentic reflection of him- or herself.

Nonetheless, there has been criticism that Goffman presents a cynical view of the ‘self’. Manning (1992), for example, argues that Goffman’s theory is based on what he calls the ‘two selves thesis’. One aspect of the self is considered to be a careful performer, while the other is the “cynical manipulator behind the public performance” (Fine & Manning, 2003, p. 46). We will return to this and other criticism later in the discussion.

An essential aspect of performance, one we have considered in examples already, is what Goffman (1959) calls ‘front’:

It will be convenient to label as “front” that part of the individuals performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance. Front, then, is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance. (Goffman, 1959, p. 22)

Front can be broken down into two broad components:

Setting: the manipulation of the environment to support a particular performance…

… involving furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage props for the spate of human action played out before, within, or upon it.  (Goffman, 1959, p.22)

Personal Front:

refers to the other items of expressive equipment, the items that we most intimately identify with the performer himself and that we naturally expect will follow the performer wherever he goes. As part of personal front we may include: insignia of office or rank; clothing; sex, age, and racial characteristics; size and looks; posture; speech patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures; and the like. (Goffman, 1959, p. 24)

Personal Front is broken down into two further categories – ‘Appearance’ and ‘Manner’. Appearance refers to the performers social status – how they are dressed, for example, or any status symbols they may have on show; while manner may be taken as “those stimuli which function at the time to warn us of the interaction role the performer will expect to play in the oncoming situation” (Goffman, 1959, p. 24). For example:

a haughty, aggressive manner may give the impression that the performer expects to be the one who will initiate the verbal interaction and direct its course. A meek, apologetic manner may give the impression that the performer expects to follow the lead of others, or at least that he can be led to do so. (Goffman, 1959, p.24)

Performances are often a collaborative effort. Individuals will often find themselves in situations whereby they must perform as part of a ‘team’. Examples of this include colleagues at work, students in a classroom, and family outings. ‘Teams’ work together to maintain a common impression and cooperate to contribute to defining the situation. They are required to trust one another to play their role convincingly.

Individuals who perform together as a team are therefore mutually dependent on one another. Each may have a specialised role to play, and there may be a ‘director’ who has “the right to direct and control the progress of the dramatic action” (Goffman, 1959, p. 97).  Members of a team are also generally aware that each individual within the team is performing while they are ‘frontstage’.

Members of a team also have access to a ‘backstage’ where they are able to relax and cease performing – to an extent. However, it should be recognised that each individual will still maintain their own personal performance, intended to be observed by other members of the team.

3. Regions and Region Behaviour

Continuing with the metaphor of the stage, Goffman (1959) considers there to be various regions, variably observable to different audiences, where performers will have more or less need to perform. He distinguishes between three different ‘regions’. These are front region , back region and outside region .

Front Region: Also referred to as ‘frontstage’. An audience is present and a performance is given. Essentially, an individual is ‘frontstage’, at least to a degree, any time they are in the presence of others.

Back Region: Also referred to as ‘backstage’. When ‘backstage’, individuals and teams can rehearse, relax and behave ‘out of character’.

[Backstage], the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character. (Goffman, 1959, p. 122)

An individual ‘backstage’ no longer has to be concerned with their appearance or manner, or with with manipulating the setting to accommodate or please an audience. Under normal circumstances the audience has little or no access to the backstage region.

Outside Region: A region occupied by ‘outsiders’ who are not intended to be present by a performer. These outsiders are neither performers or actors and are often considered to be ‘intruders’. Performances vary based on who is in the audience. Outsiders may cause confusion or embarrassment because they may not be the ‘intended audience’ for a specific performance. Goffman (1959) gives an example of a couple who regularly bicker unexpectedly receiving a guest who they do not wish to be aware of their marital troubles. Essentially, the current performance must be adapted to accommodate the outsider, although “rarely can this be done smoothly enough to preserve the newcomer’s illusion that the show suddenly put on is the performer’s natural show” (Goffman, 1959, p. 139), In other words, the ‘adapted’ performance may not be a convincing one.

4. Discrepant Roles

For far, we have considered most individuals to be categorised in one of three ways – a performer, an audience member, or an outsider. But Goffman (1959) notes that ‘discrepant roles’ also exist, where an individual may not appear what they seem or may not completely fit into any of these three predefined categories. Some examples of discrepant roles include:

The Informer:

… someone who pretends to the performers to be a member of their team, is allowed to come backstage and to acquire destructive information, and then openly or secretly sells out the show to the audience. The political, military, industrial, and criminal variants of this role are famous. If it appears that the individual first joined the team in a sincere way and not with the premeditated plan of disclosing its secrets, we sometimes call him a traitor, turncoat, or quitter, especially if he is the sort of person who ought to have made a decent teammate. The individual who all along has meant to inform on the team, and originally joins only for this purpose, is sometimes called a spy. It has frequently been noted, of course, that informers, whether traitors or spies, are often in an excellent position to play a double game, selling out the secrets of those who buy secrets from them. Informers can, of course, be classified in other ways: as Hans Speier suggests, some are professionally trained for their work, others are amateurs; some are of high estate and some of low; some work for money and others work from conviction. (Goffman, 1959, pp. 145-146)

A shill is someone who acts as though he were an ordinary member of the audience but is in fact in league with the performers. Typically, the shill either provides a visible model for the audience of the kind of response the performers are seeking or provides the kind of audience response that is necessary at the moment for the development of the performance.  (Goffman, 1959, p. 146)

We must not take the view that shills are found only in non-respectable performances… For example, at informal conversational gatherings, it is common for a wife to look interested when her husband tells an anecdote and to feed him appropriate leads and cues, although in fact she has heard the anecdote many times and knows that the show her husband is making of telling something for the first time is only a show. A shill, then, is someone who appears to be just another unsophisticated member of the audience and who uses his unapparent sophistication in the interests of the performing team. (Goffman, 1957, pp. 146-147)

Non-persons:

… are present during the interaction but in some respects do not take the role either of performer or of audience, nor do they (as do informers, shills, and spotters) pretend to be what they are not. (Goffman, 1959, p. 151)

Goffman suggests examples of ‘non-persons’ such as servants, children, the elderly and the sick. The term ‘non-person’ may come across as insensitive or prejudiced, but to be clear, Goffman is trying to outline how people are seen, thought about and treated within this framework. Such examples highlight members of society who are seen as neither performer, audience or outsider and do not make substantial impact on the way people behave in their presence. ‘Non-persons’ can often move between frontstage and backstage without causing the same sort of disruption that an ‘outsider’ might. Goffman’s (1963) work on Stigma adds a great deal of theory building on comparable concepts.

The Spotter: Undercover government or company ‘agents’ who act as a member or the public or team in order to check up on the conduct of employees or officials.

The Shopper:

… is the one who takes an unremarked, modest place in the audience… but when he leaves he goes to his employer, a competitor of the team whose performance he has witnessed, to report what he has seen. He is the professional shopper—the Gimbel’s man in Macy’s and the Macy’s man in Gimbel’s; he is the fashion spy and the foreigner at National Air Meets. [He] has a technical right to see the show but ought to have the decency, it is sometimes felt, to stay in his own back region, for his interest in the show is from the wrong perspective… (Goffman, 1959, pp. 148-149)

The Mediator: An individual who has access to both sides of a dispute but gives each side the impression that they are more loyal to them than to the other. Examples Goffman (1959) suggests are arbiters of labour disputes (negotiating between each side of the dispute), factory foremen (advancing the directives of upper management whilst maintaining the respect and willingness of workers) and chairmen or formal meetings (who are to moderate the meeting and ensure everyone is treated fairly). Goffman is amusingly cynical of ‘mediators’, concluding that they are essentially a ‘double-shill’:

When a go-between operates in the actual presence of the two teams of which he is a member, we obtain a wonderful display, not unlike a man desperately trying to play tennis with himself. Again we are forced to see that the individual is not the natural unit for our consideration but rather the team and its members. As an individual, the go-between’s activity is bizarre, untenable, and undignified, vacillating as it does from one set of appearances and loyalties to another. As a constituent part of two teams, the go-between’s vacillation is quite understandable. The go-between can be thought of simply as a double-shill. (Goffman, 1959, p. 149)

5. Communication out of Character

The discussion so far has outlined many of the ways in which a performer maintains their performance. There are, however, times when an actor may step ‘out of character’, revealing aspects of themselves that are not part of, and may be incompatible with, a given performance. For example, an actor who is unexpectedly startled or frightened while giving a performance may shout out “Good Lord” or “My God!” (Goffman, 1959, p. 169). Goffman outlines four forms this communication out of character may take:

• Treatment of the Absent: While backstage, performers may derogate and talk negatively about the audience, toward whom they speak about favourably whilst frontstage. Goffman gives an example of salespeople:

… customers who are treated respectfully during the performance are often ridiculed, gossiped about, caricatured, cursed, and criticized when the performers are backstage; here, too, plans may be worked out for “selling” them, or employing “angles” against them, or pacifying them. (Goffman, 1959, p. 170)

While it is asserted that derogative speech is most the common treatment of the absent, backstage performers may also talk positively about their audience in ways they would not whilst frontstage.

• Staging Talk: Backstage discussion between teams about various aspects of the performance, possible adjustments are considered, potential disruptions are explored, “wounds are licked, and morale is strengthened for the next performance” (Goffman, 1959, p. 176).
• Team Collusion: Communication between fellow performers and those backstage who are involved in maintaining the performance. One example of team collusion is instructions given through the in-ear piece of a television news anchor. However, team collusion can also be more subtle, such as through “unconsciously learned vocabulary of gestures and looks by which collusive staging cues can be conveyed” (Goffman, 1959, p. 181).
• Realigning Actions: Unofficial communication directed at the audience, often in an attempt to redefine the situation. Realigning actions may include “innuendo, mimicked accents, well-placed jokes, significant pauses, veiled hints, purposeful kidding, expressive overtones, and many other sign practices” (Goffman, 1959, p. 190). In the event that a performer is accused of unacceptable or improper communication out of character, through realigning actions they may attempt to claim that they did not ‘mean anything’ by their out of character communication and the audience is given a chance to disregard the outburst or mistake.

6. The Arts of Impression Management

It is a reality that performances have the potential to be disrupted. Audience members or outsiders may find their way backstage, for example, or communication out of character may result in a particular performance becoming irreconcilably contradictory with what the audience has witnessed.  ‘Impression management’ is a term used to describe the ways in which performers may plan and prepare ‘corrective practices’ for such disruptions (Goffman, 1959). These ‘dramaturgical disciplines’ may include techniques for covering up for teammates, suppressing emotions and spontaneous feelings, and maintaining self-control during performances.

Performers often rely on the “tactful tendency of the audience and outsiders to act in a protective way in order to help the performers save their own show (Goffman, 1959, p. 229). However, the tactfulness of the audience may not be enough to recover the situation, which may result in embarrassing and socially awkward consequences. As Goffman explains in his wonderfully Goffman way:

Whenever the audience exercises tact, the possibility will arise that the performers will learn that they are being tactfully protected. When this occurs, the further possibility arises that the audience will learn that the performers know they are being tactfully protected. And then, in turn, it becomes possible for the performers to learn that the audience knows that the performers know they are being protected. Now when such states of information exist, a moment in the performance may come when the separateness of the teams will break down and be momentarily replaced by a communion of glances through which each team openly admits to the other its state of information. At such moments, the whole dramaturgical structure of social interaction is suddenly and poignantly laid bare, and the line separating the teams momentarily disappears. Whether this close view of things brings shame or laughter, the teams are likely to draw rapidly back into their appointed character. (Goffman, 1959, 233)

Summary Conclusion

Here we will conclude this summary of Presentation of Self . It is a fairly extensive summary in comparison to many currently available and is focused principally on helping students to engage in the core ideas found throughout the book. As has become usual on this website, I have used extensive quotations with the aim of encouraging readers to explore this key text more directly. While I consider this summary to be fairly extensive, it does not nearly cover everything. My hope is that there is enough here to provide a relatively clear outline of what Goffman (1959) is trying to say. That said, it should be noted that Goffman’s theories are notoriously considered to be tricky to understand structurally. His work can be difficult to neatly condense and summarise. At the same time, something about his work changes the way we view the world. As Lemert (1997) puts it:

The experience Goffman effects is that of colonizing a new social place into which the reader enters, from which to exit never quite the same. To have once, even if only once, seen the social world from within such a place is never after to see it otherwise, ever after to read the world anew. In thus seeing differently, we are other than we were. (Lemert, 1997 – cited in Scheff, 2003, p.52)

Scheff (2003) adds:

Our vision of the world, and even of ourselves, is transformed by reading Goffman. (Scheff, 2003, p.52)

We will now move on to some critical analysis of the book.

Critical Analysis

Goffman provides us with an interesting and useful framework within which to think about social interaction through the framework of dramaturgical analysis. As we shall see, this is not a theory which claims to explain all of society or all aspects of social interaction. What it does provide is a framework that we can apply in studying social groups and their interaction between and among one another. It is a method of analysis.

The various principles he outlines offer a range of complexities that may apply in any particular social situation. One very obvious type of social space with which the dramaturgical perspective may be useful is in the workplace – (probably) any workplace. Some questions we might want to consider in studying social interaction within such an environment include:

• What are individual performers hoping to achieve through their performances?
• How do team dynamics apply in various situations?
• Where do front and back regions exist and how clear are the lines between each?
• How do performers respond to informers, or feel about spotters and how well do they work with mediators? Are there any strategies in place to guard against such discrepant intruders?
• What contexts or situations may inspire communication out of character?
• What methods of impression management are utilised in the event a performance is disrupted or exposed?

This is just one, very brief example, but hopefully it makes the point. Other settings I personally would be interested to explore through dramaturgical analysis include homeless hostels, educational establishments, prisons (which has been done, to an extent – start with Goffman’s (1961) Asylums if you find this interesting) and hospitals.

Goffman (1959) gives us a language to explore social interaction through dramaturgical analysis. The book, like much of Goffman’s work, is filled with specific examples from autobiographies and first-hand accounts of individuals experiences. Goffman is considered by many as a “brilliant maverick” (Manning, 1992, p. 1). However, he does not follow any of the clearly defined, systematic approaches used by other notable social theorists, and this has left many Sociologists in a position where they do not know how to replicate his approach:

Part of these limits of Goffman’s impact can be attributed to the daunting perception of his idiosyncratic brilliance. Few wish to place themselves in comparison with this master sociologist, particularly since his approach lacks an easily acquired method. How can one learn to do what Goffman did? Methodological guidelines do not exist. This has the effect of leaving the work both sui generis and incapable of imitation. The belief (and perhaps the reality) is that Goffman created a personalistic sociology that was virtually mimic-proof. (Fine & Manning, 2003, p. 56)

On the other hand, while few (if any) have been able to replicate Goffman’s work, some of the most influential and successful Sociologists are indebted to his writing (Fine & Manning, 2003). Goffman’s mark on Sociology is enormous. This is both the case for his theories, as well as his writing style – as Fine & Manning (2003, p. 57) put it,“Goffman’s sardonic, satiric, jokey style has served to indicate that other genres and tropes can be legitimate forms of academic writing”. Goffman’s style is interesting, humorous and natural. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is, at the very least, an incredibly readable and engaging book.

Giddens (2009) summary of his rereading of Presentation of Self outlines and reflects on some of the main criticisms of the book. One of these is that Goffman (1959) ignores power structures throughout his discussion. Giddens (2009) correctly recognises that Goffman does explore how we ‘do’ power, but notes that he neglects any sort of systematic discussion around how power is institutionally structured. His discussion of ‘non-persons’, for example, would have benefited greatly from a focus on institutional differentials of power. Furthermore, Goffman avoids providing any historical context to his ideas. While many of the examples and citations Goffman presents are historically diverse, his analysis is intrinsically grounded in the here and now. Social interaction is very much a product of historical development, and Goffman makes no attempt to investigate this. Treviño (2003) agrees,  arguing that grounding his ideas in a more ‘recognisable theoretical tradition’ would have resulted in ‘greater coherence’ in Goffman’s work.

These criticisms are valid. However, this should not be understood to undermine the value of Goffman’s ideas. While Giddens (2009) views it as ultimately inadequate, he offers Goffman a defence – Goffman’s work is concerend with analysis of interpersonal interaction within social situations rather than macro-structural theory. He takes a micro-sociological approach and this comes with limitations. While issues of power differentiation and historical context certainly would add extra value to Goffman’s work here, it is just that – added value. Indeed, Giddens (2009) makes reference to work such as Elias (1969) and Scheff (1999), who have incorporated and connected some of Goffman’s ideas with issues of power and sociohistorical development. Whilst recognising that there will always be areas that can be (and maybe should have been) explored further, be wary of allowing such criticism to detract from the usefulness of any valuable body of work. After all, there is no reason these issues cannot be explored later and/or by other scholars.

Furthermore, according to Scheff (2006, p. viii), Goffman’s work is ‘fully original’. He deliberately evades traditional social scientific methodology and practice, seeking to get…

… outside the box, beyond the conventions of our society and of social science… Goffman’s main focus was what might be called the microworld of emotions and relationships (ERW). We all live in it every day of our lives, yet we have been trained not to notice. Since Goffman noticed it, he was the discoverer of a hidden world. His work, if properly construed, provides a window into that otherwise invisible place… it is important in its own right, since it constitutes the moment-by-moment texture of our lives. Second, it is intimately connected to the larger world; it both causes and is caused by that world. If we are to have more than a passing understanding of ourselves and our society, we need to become better acquainted with the emotional/relational world… Conventional social science mostly ignores emotions and relationships in favour of behaviour and cognition. Goffman’s recognition of the existence of an ERW is the foundation of his whole approach. He realized, at some level, that conventional social and behavioural science was blind to the ERW, and might as well be blind in many other arenas as well… Following Goffman’s lead, if we are going to advance in our understanding of the human condition, we need to build a new approach. This approach would not only include the ERW, but other hitherto unrecognized structures and processes as well, such as the filigree of emotions and relationships that underlies large-scale behaviour, as in the case of collective cooperation and conflict. (Scheff, 2006, p. vii – ix)

Following Scheff (2006) then, we can turn the criticism that Goffman ignores other aspects of traditional Sociology on its head. Indeed, we can argue that Goffman is exploring aspects of social life that have remained largely hidden to the rest of the field. To quote Treviño (2003, p. 36), Presentation of Self was “the first sociological effort to truly treat face-to face interaction as a subject of study, as an order, in its own right, at its own level”. Those issues of macro social structure, those of institutional power differentials and of sociohistorical development were not revealed and communicated even nearly in full by any one body of work or by one sole theorist. As ‘discoverer’ of this aspect of the social world, it would be unreasonable to expect Goffman to combine his ideas with all available aspects of social science into one unifying theory of all social life and social structure. All science is collaborative, and Goffman provides us with one more addition to a dizzying array of diverse social science. Nonetheless, it is worth taking these criticisms seriously, if only as a recognition that Goffman, like any other social theorist, provides us with just one perspective with which to view the world. His theories should be used alongside, rather than in isolation from, other perspectives in Sociology.

Another reasonable criticism briefly mentioned earlier in this discussion is that Goffman’s view of the ‘self’ is grounded in what Manning (1992) calls the ‘two selves thesis’. It is argued here that Goffman takes a cynical view of the ‘self’, which he inherently suggests has two sides – one, the careful performer, the other the ‘cynical manipulator’ guiding the performance. It is fair to claim that human beings and their interactions are far more complex, far more multifaceted, than Goffman seems to suggest. Manning (1992) points out that Goffman recognised and attempted to distance himself from this thesis with small additions to the second 1959 edition of the book as well as in subsequent work. It seems that Goffman does not want us to view the dramaturgical analogy as a complete and full description of the self or as a tool to accurately understand all aspects of social interaction. Indeed, he uses the final few paragraphs of Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to reinforce this. We shall therefore conclude this summary as Goffman (1959) choses to end his book :

And now a final comment. In developing the conceptual framework employed in this report, some language of the stage was used. I spoke of performers and audiences; of routines and parts; of performances coming off or falling flat; of cues, stage settings and backstage; of dramaturgical needs, dramaturgical skills, and dramaturgical strategies. Now it should be admitted that this attempt to press a mere analogy so far was in part a rhetoric and a maneuver. The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation, knowing that at any time they will easily be able to demonstrate to themselves that it is not to be taken too seriously . An action staged in a theater is a relatively contrived illusion and an admitted one; unlike ordinary life, nothing real or actual can happen to the performed characters—although at another level of course something real and actual can happen to the reputation of performers qua professionals whose everyday job is to put on theatrical performances. And so here the language and mask of the stage will be dropped . Scaffolds, after all, are to build other things with, and should be erected with an eye to taking them down . This report is not concerned with aspects of theater that creep into everyday life. It is concerned with the structure of social encounters—the structure of those entities in social life that come into being whenever persons enter one another’s immediate physical presence. The key factor in this structure is the maintenance of a single definition of the situation , this definition having to be expressed, and this expression sustained in the face of a multitude of potential disruptions. A character staged in a theatre is not in some ways real, nor does it have the same kind of real consequences as does the thoroughly contrived character performed by a confidence man; but the successful staging of either of these types of false figures involves use of real techniques—the same techniques by which everyday persons sustain their real social situations. Those who conduct face to face interaction on a theatre’s stage must meet the key requirement of real situations; they must expressively sustain a definition of the situation: but this they do in circumstances that have facilitated their developing an apt terminology for the interactional tasks that all of us share. (Goffman, 1959, pp. 254-255, emphasis added )

Goffman (1959) intends his dramaturgical methaphor to be used as a scaffold. It is not all-emcompassing and is not adequate as an approach used in isolation. Rather, it is a means to an end. It is a method of highlighting and teasing out aspects of social interaction which, once identified, must be analysed further through the use of other Sociological methologies and perspectives. Nonetheless, the analogy of the theatre to describe everyday life is fascinating and has had substantial impact on the field.

Elias, N., 1969. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Fine, G. A. & Manning, P., 2003. Erving Goffman. In: The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 34-62.

Giddens, A., 2009. On Rereading The Presentation of Self: Some Reflections. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72(4), pp. 290-295.

Goffman, E., 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.

Goffman, E., 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and other Inmates. New York: Anchor.

Goffman, E., 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. London: Penguin.

International Sociological Association, 1998. Books of the Century. [Online] Available at: https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/history-of-isa/books-of-the-xx-century

Manning, P., 1992. Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Scheff, T. J., 1999. Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Scheff, T. J., 2003. The Goffman Legacy: Deconstructing/Reconstructimg Social Science. In: Goffman’s Legacy. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 50-70.

Scheff, T. J., 2006. Goffman Unbound! A New Paradigm for Social Science. Routledge: Oxon.

Treviño, A. J., 2003. Introduction: Erving Goffman and the Interaction Order. In: Goffman’s Legacy. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 1-49.

• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Summary

by Erving Goffman

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Goffman's initial discussion frames social interaction, in person specifically, as a performance. Subsequently a sequence of metaphors about theater ensue. The people are actors playing roles. The venue of social interaction is the stage. And the performance is two-fold. As a participant, each person desires to protect their reputation and public appearance. On the other hand, individuals are also trying to learn as much as possible about the people around them.

Remarking upon intent, Goffman outlines how each performance is a risky endeavor. People are trying to save face and avoid embarrassment. To this end, entire groups or teams are formed which help individuals align according to their common style of performance. With such high risk, it seems initially odd that people engage in social relationships, but the reward of discovering knowledge about other people proves worthwhile most of the time.

The curious thing about social performance, in Goffman's esteem, is that the theatrical metaphor breaks down in the reciprocal nature of relationship. At any given moment, folks are both performer and audience. People are all, collectively, engaged in a performance, which often causes unspoken diversions from honesty. For example, if a person trips at a fancy dinner party, the other people at the party may not acknowledge that the person tripped. Their goal is to make the performance a success, so they are likely to help the individual save face. Goffman finally dips into social science by observing that within the structure of the performance, the individual retains a good amount of agency to craft an experience for their audience.

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The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a book that was published in the U.S. in 1959, written by sociologist  Erving Goffman . In it, Goffman uses the imagery of theater in order to portray the nuances and significance of face-to-face social interaction. Goffman puts forth a theory of social interaction that he refers to as the dramaturgical model of social life.

According to Goffman, social interaction may be likened to a theater, and people in everyday life to actors on a stage, each playing a variety of roles. The audience consists of other individuals who observe the role-playing and react to the performances. In social interaction, like in theatrical performances, there is a 'front stage' region where the actors are on stage  before an audience, and their consciousness of that audience and the audience's expectations for the role they should play influence the actor's behavior. There is also a back region, or 'backstage,' where individuals can relax, be themselves, and the role or identity that they play when they are in front of others.

Central to the book and Goffman's theory is the idea that people, as they interact together in social settings, are constantly engaged in the process of "impression management," wherein each tries to present themselves and behave in a way that will prevent the embarrassment of themselves or others. This is primarily done by each person that is part of the interaction working to ensure that all parties have the same "definition of the situation," meaning that all understand what is meant to happen in that situation, what to expect from the others involved, and thus how they themselves should behave.

Though written over half a century ago,  The Presentation of Self in Everday Life  remains one of the most famous and widely taught sociology books, which was listed as the 10th most important sociology book of the twentieth century by the International Sociological Association in 1998.

Performance

Goffman uses the term ‘performance’ to refer to all the activity of an individual in front of a particular set of observers, or audience. Through this performance, the individual, or actor, gives meaning to themselves, to others, and to their situation. These performances deliver impressions to others, which communicates information that confirms the identity of the actor in that situation. The actor may or may not be aware of their performance or have an objective for their performance, however, the audience is constantly attributing meaning to it and to the actor.

The setting for the performance includes the scenery, props, and location in which the interaction takes place. Different settings will have different audiences and will thus require the actor to alter his performances for each setting.

Appearance functions to portray to the audience the performer’s social statuses. Appearance also tells us of the individual’s temporary social state or role, for example, whether he is engaging in work (by wearing a uniform), informal recreation, or a formal social activity. Here, dress and props serve to communicate things that have socially ascribed meaning, like gender , status, occupation, age, and personal commitments.

Manner refers to how the individual plays the role and functions to warn the audience of how the performer will act or seek to act in a role (for example, dominant, aggressive, receptive, etc.). Inconsistency and contradiction between appearance and manner may occur and will confuse and upset an audience. This can happen, for example, when one does not present himself or behave in accordance with his perceived social status or position.

The actor’s front, as labeled by Goffman, is the part of the individual’s performance which functions to define the situation for the audience. It is the image or impression he or she gives off to the audience. A social front can also be thought of like a script. Certain social scripts tend to become institutionalized in terms of the stereotyped expectations it contains. Certain situations or scenarios have social scripts that suggest how the actor should behave or interact in that situation. If the individual takes on a task or role that is new to him, he or she may find that there are already several well-established fronts among which he must choose. According to Goffman, when a task is given a new front or script, we rarely find that the script itself is completely new. Individuals commonly use pre-established scripts to follow for new situations, even if it is not completely appropriate or desired for that situation.

Front Stage, Back Stage, and Off Stage

In stage drama, as in everyday interactions, according to Goffman, there are three regions, each with different effects on an individual’s performance: front stage, backstage, and off-stage. The front stage is where the actor formally performs and adheres to conventions that have particular meaning for the audience. The actor knows he or she is being watched and acts accordingly.

When in the backstage region, the actor may behave differently than when in front of the audience on the front stage. This is where the individual truly gets to be herself and get rid of the roles that she plays when she is in front of other people.

Finally, the off-stage region is where individual actors meet the audience members independently of the team performance on the front stage. Specific performances may be given when the audience is segmented as such.

• Goffman's Front Stage and Back Stage Behavior
• The Meaning and Purpose of the Dramaturgical Perspective
• A Biography of Erving Goffman
• How Our Aligning Behavior Shapes Everyday Life
• "Cheating Out," "Breaking Curtain," and More Curious Theatre Jargon
• Ancient Greek Tragedy
• 15 Major Sociological Studies and Publications
• Stage Directions for Actors: The Basics
• Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
• Aristotle's Tragedy Terminology
• What Is a Total Institution?
• What Is Self-Concept in Psychology?
• Choose the Right Setting for Your Play
• Famous Sociologists
• What Is Role Conflict in Sociology?
• An Overview of Labeling Theory

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The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

The self is a performance!

Table of Contents

Last Updated on February 24, 2023 by Karl Thompson

An ‘extended summary’ of Erving Goffman’s ‘Presentation of Self in Daily Life’ including his concepts of front and backstage, performers and audiences, impression management, idealisation, dramatic realisation, manipulation, discrepant roles and tact. 

Chapter One: Performances

Goffman distinguishes between two approaches to acting out social roles: sincerity and cynicism .

Sincere individuals really believe their act is an expression of their own identity, and truly want others to believe this too (the ‘typical’ case), while cynical individuals do not invest ‘themselves’ in their roles, they are acting with a means to another end, which can either be for self-gain (like a conman) or for the benefit of the people around them (a teacher who acts strict but is not necessarily like this in real life).

To quote Goffman:

“At one extreme, one finds that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; and he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality. When the audience is also convinced in this way about the show he put one – and this seems to be the typical case – then for the moment at least, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled will have any doubts about the ‘realness’ of what is presented.

At the other extreme, we find that the performer may not be taken in at all by his own routine… the performer may be moved to guide the conviction of the audience only a means to other ends, having no ultimate concern in the conception they have of him or of the situation. “

Goffman goes on to say that people can oscillate between these two extremes as they move through different stages of their lives. He gives the example of a new recruit to the army who first of all acts out the disciplined training routine and hates it but must go along with it in order to avoid punishment, but after time comes to feel that a disciplined life has real meaning for him personally.

Goffman uses the term ‘performance’ to refer to “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on observers. ‘Front’ is ‘that part of the individuals performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance”.

There are three things an individual can use to establish a ‘ social front ‘ – Setting, Appearance and Manner (the final two Goffman calls ‘personal front’ ).

• ‘Setting’ refers to the fixed elements of front – the physical layout of a room and associated background props – someone’s work space or living room is a good example of a ‘setting’.
• ‘Appearance’ consists of those things we most closely associate with the person themselves – the things which ‘follow them around’ and consists of fixed attributes such as one’s racial background or age, as well as things like clothes and the items one chooses to carry around.
• ‘Manner’ is the attitude to one’s setting one displays – confidence, humility, authority etc.

We generally expect there to be consistency between setting, appearance and manner, but these don’t always match up.

Goffman also notes that we are constrained by society in terms of the front we can put on. If we adopt certain roles in society, we don’t actually have that much choice over the front which we can adopt – we are required by social norms to put on a certain front, and there is little room for manoeuvre.

He further suggests that the same sorts of front are required in many different roles – so if we successfully learn to project one front in one setting, we can apply that front to many others.

Dramatic Realisation

“While in the presence of others, the individual typically infuses his activity with signs which dramatically highlight and portray confirmatory facts which might otherwise remain hidden. “

Many social roles and ‘status positions’ require a certain amount of energy to be invested in the performance of the activities associated with them, energy that is in excess to actually performing the tasks associated with the roles themselves.

One of the best illustrations of this is the Aristocracy – who spend an enormous amount of intentional energy on performing day to day tasks with excess decorum in order to distinguish themselves from others. There are rituals associated with dress codes, greetings, eating, body language, speech and so on….

To give a more mundane example, many jobs require people do certain things to convince the customer or client that they are competent.

A problem in social life is that “those who have the time and the talent to perform a task well may not, because of this, have the time or talent to make it apparent that they are performing well. “

There are many roles which we are required to fill in social life, and so one finds that people must choose which performances to invest their egos in; some social roles and some routines are deemed to be more important than others.

Idealisation

“When the individual presents himself before others his performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify officially accredited values of the society, more so, in fact, than does his behaviour as a whole. “

“ To the degree that the performance highlights the common official values, we may look upon it as an expressive reaffirmation of the moral values of the community “(Maybe a nod to Durkheim there?).

To go out in the world is to attend a wedding, a celebration, to stay in one’s room is to miss out on the party.

People play up or down their actual status according to how they think others perceive them (without actually buying into it)…. Social Mobility requires a good performance – often conceived of as making sacrifices in order to maintain ‘front’,

People also engage in negative idealisation , which involves concealment – people will, for example, ‘play down’ when they are interacting with people they believe to be of lower status, in order to fit in with them (although this may not be appreciated by that particular audience)

“a performer tends to conceal or under-play those activities, facts and motives, which are incompatible with an idealized version of himself and his products.’ There are a number of discrepancies between appearance and overall reality”:

• Hiding the profit which is made from a performance
• Hiding the mistakes made during a performance
• Hiding the effort that goes into preparing a performance (the back-stage work)
• Hiding any illegal activities
• Hiding double standards – this happens because we are often expected to maintain multiple values/ standards which are cannot all be maintained – for example a team at a restaurant may have to sacrifice quality for speed of service, but keep quite about the decline in quality and hope this isn’t picked up on by the audience.
• Hiding of origins – people tend to hide the fact they were something else before their performance, giving off the impression that they have always been this way.

In addition, a performer often engenders in his audience the belief that he is related to them in a more ideal way than is always the case.

An important part of keeping aspects a performance hidden involves practising audience segregation – different performances associated with different roles are often meant for different audiences, who ideally won’t see the actor in any of his other performances. This is especially important because something actors do is to make any particular audience feel as if they are special, the most important audience, when in reality they are just one audience amongst many.

Maintenance of expressive control

Performers can reasonably expect minor cues to be read by their audience as signs of something significant. Unfortunately, the opposite is also the case – minor cues which were not intended to be read by the audience may also be taken to be of significance and these may undermine the image the performer is trying to present.

These accidents and unmet gestures are very common and there are three general types:

• Losing muscular control – tripping, yawning, belching
• Showing too little or too much concern with the interaction
• Lacking dramaturgical direction – the setting may be sloppy, or the timing of aspects of a performance wrong.

“The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between out all-too-human selves and our socialised selves. As human beings we are presumably creatures of variable impulse with moods and energies that change from one moment to the next. As characters for an audience, however, we must not be subject to ups and downs. A certain bureaucratisation of the spirit expected so that we can be relied upon to give a perfectly homogeneous performance at any given time”.

Misrepresentation

The same tendency of the audience to accept the importance of signs (even if they are not meant to give off any meaning) which leads to the need for expressive control also opens up the opportunity for the performer to manipulate the audience through using signs to signify things which have no basis in reality.

Not all misrepresentation is the same. For example we tend to think more harshly of someone acting up to a higher status than acting down to a lower status. Also, some statuses are ambiguous. We can prove easily that someone is not a legal professional, but it is not so easy to prove someone is not a ‘true friend’.

Most misrepresentation is not about blatant lying, it is about not putting on display everything one has to do fulfil one’s social roles, and there are hardly any roles in society where everyone can be completely open about everything the do without losing face in some way.

Mystification

One of the easiest ways to maintain an idealised image of oneself is to maintain a distance between oneself and one’s audience – The more distance a performer can keep between them and their audience, the more elbow room they have to maintain an idealised image of themselves (Kings should not mix with ordinary people).

Reality and Contrivance

We generally tend to think of performances as being of one or two types – the sincere and the contrived. The former are not acted, they come from the unconscious ‘pure self’ of the individual who really believes in what they are doing, the later is the cynic, acting out a role without really believing in it.

But most performances on the social stage fall somewhere between these two realities. What is required in social life is that the individual learn enough about role-playing to fulfil the basic social roles that are required of him during his life – most of us ‘buy into this’ and act out what is expected of us, so we invest an element of ourselves into our roles, but at the same time we don’t necessarily get into our roles in a gung-ho sort of way…. So most acting is neither fully ‘sincere’ or fully ‘contrived’.

Chapter two: teams

People don’t just engage in the presentation of the self as single actors, performances (or attempts to define the situation) are often conducted in teams – Goffman uses the term ‘performance team’ to refer to a group of people who collaborate in staging a single performance.

Goffman notes two features of teams engaging in dramaturgical cooperation.

• Firstly , anyone can one of the team members can mess up a performance, and everyone is dependent on the good conduct of everyone else.
• Secondly , team members have a degree of ‘familiarity’ with one another – which means that they share a back-stage where they will drop their collective performance.

Teams have to conceal certain aspects of their activity to make their collective performance effective: for example the fact that they have engineered, or practised a ‘party line’ is hidden because a collective front seems more sincere if the audience thinks all the members agreed on the performance independently.

In large organisations the party line can become rather thin because it is difficult to keep everyone happy.

Also in order to be sincere, teams need to hold a united front, and so corrective sanctioning tends to be done backstage.

Teams have a division of labour – they have directors, they have those who are more dramatically dominant than others, and they have those that actually do the tasks (rather than the performance) which the team is expected to do.

Chapter three: regions and region behaviour

“In our Anglo-American society, a relatively indoor one, when a performance is given it is usually given in a highly bounded region, to which boundaries with respect to time are often added. The impression and understanding fostered by the performance will tend to saturate the region and time span, so that any individual located in this space-time manifold will be in a position to observe the performance and be guided by the definition of the situation which the performance fosters”.

Goffman famously distinguished between what have become known as frontstage and backstage regions of social life.

During a performance in a front region, the performer tries to convince the audience that that his activities in the region maintain and embody certain standards. To do this he engages in ‘talk’ with the audience – actual verbal and non-verbal gestural interchanges, and also practices ‘decorum’ – maintaining moral standards and manners but where he just visible to the audience rather than interacting with them gesturally.

One form of decorum is called ‘make work’ – people acting like they are busy even when there is not work to be done when in the presence of a superior. Everyone knows what’s going on but to not act this out would be to show disrespect to one’s superiors.

A backstage region is where the impression fostered by a performance is contradicted as a matter of course. Here a performer can relax, and step out of character.

Backstage is a place where the performer expects the audience not to go, and they are necessary if the worker is to buffer himself from the deterministic demands that go along with a performance.

NB – The ability to control both front and backstage is a fundamental power distinction in society. Some have more power to control both than others.

Some regions are permanently front regions — such as churches or schoolrooms, so much so that people act in them with a certain deference even if they are not members of their congregations. Similarly some other regions are notably backstage. Such areas set the tone for the interaction.

In other regions, they can sometimes be backstage and front stage at different times – the household for example on Sunday morning or while entertaining.

Goffman now provides some examples of where some groups of people lack control over backstage or where the ‘walls’ between front and backstage are too thin to maintain effective boundaries.

He also notes that the boundary between back and front stage is a great place to observe transformation of character.

Where teams are concerned, familiarity backstage may not be total. Three things put paid to this – firstly team members still need to convince other team members that they are worthy players, secondly, they may need to maintain morale for the forthcoming performance, thirdly, where there are differences in age and gender, acts may be put on to differentiate these – it is very rare in cultures that men and women will fully relax backstage with each other for example.

“In saying that performers act in a relatively informal, familiar, relaxed way while backstage and are on their guard while giving a performance, it should not be assumed that the pleasant interpersonal things of life – courtesy, warmth, generosity are reserved for those backstage and that suspiciousness, snobbishness, and a show of authority are reserved for front region activity.

Often it seems that whatever enthusiasm and lively interest we have at our disposal we reserve for those before whom we are putting on a show and the surest sign of backstage solidarity is to feel that it is safe to lapse into an associable mood of sullen, silent irritability. “

A third area for consideration is the outside, and outsiders – those who are not supposed to witness the performance. Embarrassment can occur when outsiders unexpectedly stumble across a performance meant for others only. Strategies can be employed to overcome this (such as loudly welcoming them or shunning them) but these rarely work to avoid embarrassment.

Chapter four: discrepant roles

“One overall objective of any team is to sustain the definition of the situation that its performance fosters. Given the fragility and the required expressive coherence of the reality that is dramatized by a performance, there are usually facts which, if attention is drawn to them during the performance, would discredit, disrupt, or make useless the impression that the performance fosters.

These facts may be said to provide ‘destructive information’ . (in order for performances to work) the audience must not require destructive information about the situation that is being defined for them… A team must be able to keep its secrets, and have its secrets kept”.

There are three general types of secret:

• Dark secrets – these are things which the team would want no one to know because their disclosure would fundamentally undermine the team’s credibility – The fact that Barclay’s Bankers regularly engage in Fraud for example
• Strategic secrets – These are secrets which give a team a competitive advantage over another team – so their disclosure would harm the team but not discredit them
• Insider secrets – basically ‘tricks of the trade’ – knowledge which allows teams to put on a good performance but the disclosure of which would not really harm the team in the eyes of the audience.

Goffman also distinguishes between entrusted and free secrets – which are to do with the kind of secrets an individual has in relation to his team. the former are those which if not kept by an individual would discredit both himself and his team if not kept, the later would discredit the team but not the individual if not kept.

Secrets are not the only sources of destructive information – there are also ‘latent secrets’ (harmful facts about which there is no hard evidence about) and unintended gestures – basically accidents and unmeant gestures.

Social roles

There are three general roles involved in any social situation –

• The performers who define the situation and have destructive information about the performance
• The audience who largely accept the definition of the situation but do not have destructive information
• Outsiders who no little of either of the above.

There, are however, a number of ‘ discrepant roles’ which occur on top of the above three major roles:

• The informer
• The spotter
• The shopper
• The mediator
• the non person: e.g. the servant, the very young and the very old.

There are also four additional discrepant roles – who are not present in a performance but have information about it (who may be present in our minds of performers while they are acting out roles).

• The service specialist
• Renegades .

Chapter five: communication out of character

Discrepant sentiment is nearly always found when we study institutions. There are nearly always occasions when team members make it clear to each other that they are just playing a role, and they communicate with each other out of character – there are four types of communication in which the performer engages which are incompatible with the impression trying to be collectively portrayed to an audience – treatment of the absent, staging talk, team collusion and realigning action.

Treatment of the absent – When backstage it is especially common for team members to speak in a derogatory way about the audience, and ritual profanations of the performance are part of this.

Staging talk – refers to discussion about the front stage apparatus and their suitability for impression management.

Team collusion – Performers often use secret signs to signal to each other during a performance. These may be secret messages pertaining to what they think of certain audience members, this may just be ‘catching the eye’ of another member of the team and a sly glance. One notable form of this is ‘derisive collusion’, an example of which is school children in class passing notes to each-other.

Realigning action – these are guarded exchanges between teams which send out feelers and set the tone for interaction where the boundaries are not clear

“each of these four types of conduct directs attention to the same point: the performance given by a team is not a spontaneous, immediate response to the situation absorbing all of the team’s energy; the performance is something the team members can stand back from, back far enough to imagine or play out simultaneously other kinds of performances attesting to other realities. “

Chapter six: the arts of impression management

Unmeant gestures, inopportune interruptions and the like are sources of dissonance and embarrassment, but both performers and audience alike tend to have strategies for ‘saving the show’ and to prevent masks falling off in many performance situations.

Performers engage in defensive attributes and practices

Dramaturgical loyalty – attempts to achieve high levels of in-group solidarity to prevent some members of the team becoming too close to the audience and giving away dark or strategic secrets; regularly changing audience may also be another strategy.

Dramaturgical discipline – simply where each member of the team learns to better control aspects of their performance

Dramaturgical circumspection – basically trying to select the audience that is likely to be the kindest – teachers prefer middle class schools, salesmen prefer to sell to one rather than two people.

Audience members engage in protective practices

Goffman gives various examples – individuals voluntarily stay away from backstage areas, and audiences are careful to pay attention to the right aspects of a performance – when performances go wrong they practice tactful inattention for example.

Goffman finishing off by noting that performers and audiences need to be ‘tactful about tact’ – they need to be sensitive to when each is employing tact lest masks fall off and embarrassment is the result.

Chapter six: conclusion

It’s worth quoting the first page at length, because it basically summarises the whole book:

“…. any social establishment may be studied from the perspective of impression management. Within the walls of a social establishment we find a team of performers who cooperate to present to an audience a given definition of the situation. This will will include the conception of own team and of audience and assumptions concerning the ethos that is to be maintained by rules of politeness and decorum.

We often find division into back region, where the routine is prepared and front region, where the performance is presented. Access to backstage is controlled to prevent the audience and outsiders from seeing preparations. Among members of the team, we tend to find solidarity, familiarity and secrets being kept.

A tacit agreement is maintained between performers and audience to act as if a given degree of opposition and of accord existed between them. Typically, but not always, agreement is stressed and opposition is underplayed. The resulting working consensus tends to be contradicted by the attitude towards the audience which the performers express backstage and through communication out of character while ‘on stage’. We find that discrepant roles develop which complicate the problems of putting on a show.

Sometimes disruptions occur which threaten the definition of the situation which is being maintained. Performers and Audience all utilise techniques for saving the show – teams are careful to select loyal and circumspect members and prefer to play to audiences who are tactful.”

The analytical context

Goffman sees his ‘dramaturgical perspective’ as the fifth perspective among four already existing ones for viewing a social system (technical, political, structural, cultural)

“The dramaturgical perspective can be employed, like any other, as a final way of ordering facts. This would lead us to describe the techniques of impression management employed in a given establishment, the principal problems of impression management, and the identity and inter-relationships of the several performance teams within the establishment. “

Goffman also suggests that we can look at any of the above in relation to technical, cultural aspects of a social system as well.

He further suggests that we can look of all of the above in relation to their impact on the individual personality, the social interactions themselves and the wider society.

MORAL NOTE: THE ROLE OF EXPRESSION IS CONVEYING IMPRESSIONS OF SELF

To uncover fully the factual nature of the situation, it would be necessary for the individual to know all the relevant social data about others. Full information is rarely available; in its absence appearances must be relied upon instead.

The information off is treated as having a moral character – we tend to assume that people shouldn’t mislead us with the information they give off – even though we know full well that this is what we do, and that we also know that much information given off is not done so intentionally.

There is a basic dialectic:

“In their capacity as performers, individuals will be concerned with maintaining the impression that they are living up to the many standards by which they and their products are judged. Because these standards are so numerous and pervasive, the individuals who are performers dwell more than we might think in a moral world. But, qua performers, individuals are concerned not with the moral issue of realising these standards but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realised.”

The dialectic is that the more effort we put into managing the impression of being a moral actor, the more distant we come to feel from the standards we are acting out, and the more and higher the standards, the more effort, so the more distant we feel!

The key factor in this structure is the maintenance of a single definition of the situation, this definition having to be expressed, and this expression sustained in the face of a multitude of potential disruption. (These are the interactional tasks which all of us share).

Staging and the self

Goffman splits the individual into two –

The character (or characters): this is what the performer presents to the audience, the social self – which is constructed with the use of various props, a stage as setting and a team as collaborators. THE INDIVIDUAL CANNOT CONSTRUCT A SELF WITHOUT ALL OF THE SOCIAL STAGING THAT GOES ALONG WITH IT.

The performer : the harried actor who is putting on a performance – The performer’s own psychological well-being is fundamentally linked to his social-self.

Signposting and Sources

Goffman’s theory is one of the main social action theories taught as part of A-level sociology, within the Theories and Methods module.

Erving Goffman (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Pelican edition). This was the version I read to construct the above summary.

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Erving Goffman, the presentation of self in everyday life (1959)

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T1 - Erving Goffman, the presentation of self in everyday life (1959)

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