April 3rd, 2022 
Self: I as MindPHIL 236-2408
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was one of the most influential sociologists and social psychologists of the twentieth century. Influenced by such sociologists as Emile Durkheim and George Simmel, psychologist Sigmund Freud, and the pragmatists, especially G.H. Mead, his sociological approach and methodology escapes any one specific label. His most noted works include The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Asylum, Stigma, Interaction Ritual, and Frame Analysis.
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He is most remembered for his dramaturgical approach to the self. This theory of the self is a form of micro-sociology that defines human social interactions as comparable to a theatrical performance defined by time, place, and audience. This approach to the self shares’ similarities to Mead’s self, as it too defines the self by the reflective act of accounting for the other’s anticipated behavior in oneself.
Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
The Dramaturgical Approach
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Goffman uses the theatrical metaphor for analyzing social interactions and the development and expression of self. In the book, he is interested in the type of mutual influencing that takes place between people who are physically co-present. Echoing Shakespeare, all the world’s a stage, and we are the players. In every social situation we are acting out a role.
Interestingly, the word person has its origins from the Latin persona, meaning “a mask worn by actors.” Viewed in this way, the dramaturgical approach comes nearest to the earliest understanding of what it means to be a person.
In offering such a dramaturgical approach, he intends to explore certain fundamental principles underlying face-to-face interaction. His intent is to analyze how persons in ”ordinary work situations present himself and his activity to others, the ways in which he guides and controls the impression they form of him, and the kinds of things he may and may not do while sustaining his performance before them” (Goffman, 1959, p. 8).
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The Dramaturgical Approach
It is important to note, the dramaturgical approach to the self suggests that a person’s identity is not a fixed and independent psychological or metaphysical entity but is constantly reorganized or recreated as the person interacts with others. There is, then, no one authentic self or identity. There is nothing but social performances.
What does our stage presence look like? What do us performers do to organize and maintain the performance? The answer is in what follows.
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ImpressionManagement
Presentation of Self and Impression Management:
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The Self and Impression Management
In each interaction individuals unavoidably seek to control the impression that others form of him or in order to achieve individual or social goals. Goffman refers to this activity of the performer as impression management.
During the impression management of any interaction, the individual expresses herself in two radically different sign activities. These may be described in two ways: The expression that one gives and the expression that one gives off.
Expressions one gives are verbal and nonverbal symbols we consciously use in order to convey a specific meaning. Expressions we give off consist of signs and expressions one unwittingly and unconsciously emits. So, in everyday, face-to-face interactions we are involved in two “streams of communication.”
For Goffman, in each social interaction, we seek to define and maintain a situation. We do so by making inferences based on the expressions we each give and give off. We maintain a performance of the situation through our impression management. We act according to the demands of the situation. By way of actions and gestures, we performers make suggestions as to how the situation is to be defined and thus as to how others are to perceive and treat each other.
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The Self as Moral
Consider the following quote from Goffman as he makes the argument for the intrinsic moral nature of the social self:
“Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way… when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect. He also implicitly forgoes all claims to be things he does not appear to be” (Goffman, 1959, p. 13).
It may seem at first glance that a self defined by a performance or a role would hold no intrinsic morality. For Goffman, however, we perform in social encounters in order that we maintain social cohesion. And we do so in order that we act in accordance with what the situation demands of us.
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Helpful Definitions
Interaction (face-to-face interaction; social encounter) – the reciprocal influence of individuals upon one another’s actions when in one another’s immediate physical presence.
Performance – all 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.
Dramaturgy – everyday-life face-to-face interactions emerge as a continuous series of staged negotiations or exchanges.
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VIDEO
Erving Goffman and the Presented Self
Dramaturgical Analysis
Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgy
Erving Goffman
Explaining Erving Goffman’s Expressive Order: Face and Presentation of Self
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