Erving Goffman: Dramaturgy of Social Life
Source: An Interview With Erving Goffman, 1980
I don’t know what your feelings are an this, but mine have been, coming from Chicago, that there was the tradition. of George Herbert Mead to provide the social psychological underpinnings or background for any study. From there one could go in all kinds of directions, one of which is the one [Everett] Hughes developed: a sort of occupational Sociology and basically Urban Ethnography. And what I did up to a few years ago before I got somewhat more interested in Sociolinguistics was a version of Urban Ethnography with Meadian Social Psychology. But that Meadian Social Psychology was a social psychological underpinning for a large amount of work in American Sociology and could, sort of, be taken for granted as just part of basic Sociology.
So, I’ve never felt that a label was necessary. If I had to be labeled at all, it would have been as a Hughesian urban ethnographer. And what happened about, I suppose, six or seven years ago, was some movement in Sociology for persons to classify themselves. On the social psychologicaI side, it was probably stimulated as a response to ethnomethodologists, who labeled themselves. They were on the social psychological side, I suppose the first group that oriented to a label that excluded and included. I always felt that the introduction of the term, symbolic interactionism, as a label for some sort of group was a response of people to tendencies in sociology to fracture and fragment and, for some of the persons in the fragments, to make a “club” of their profession. So I’ve never treated the label very seriously. I don’t think it applies very much.
Source: An Interview With Erving Goffman, 1980
The dramaturgy was partly just a name people applied. Burke, Kenneth Burke, was an influence in somewhat the same way. Louis Wirth, at the time we were all students in Chicago, felt that Permanence and Change [Burke, 1935/1954] was the most important book in Social Psychology. So we all read that, and that was a real influence on all of us I think. Burke’s later work somewhat less so. But then there was interactive process-one looks around in writing one’s stuff for references for authentication, authority, and the like and so one dips into things that one might affiliate oneself with. My main influences were [Lloyd] Warner and [A. R.] Radcliffe-Brown, [Emile] Durkheim, and Hughes. Maybe [Max] Weber also.
Source: An Interview With Erving Goffman, 1980
JV: I have two other questions, to conclude. The first one-you mention at a certain moment [Alfred] Schutz. What is the meaning of Schutz for your work?
EG: again it was a late sort of thing, but the last book on Frame Analysis [I974} was influenced by him. [Gregory] Bateson quite a bit, but Schutz’s [1967] paper on multiple realities was an influence. Schutz is continuing to be something of an influence. His stuff on the corpus of experience and that sort of thing. There are some ways in which he impinges upon sociolinguistic concerns, but I can’t profess to be a close student.
Key Terms
- Roles
- Drama
- Face to Face Interaction
- Frames
- Scenes
- Scenarios
- Social Simulation
- Life as Drama
- Social Psychology
- Symbolic Interactionism
- Erving Goffman
- Kenneth Burke
- Front Stage
- Backstage
- Entry and Exit
- Performance
- Interaction Order
- Interaction Rituals
- Impression Management
- Faces and Masks
- World as a Play
- Universal Drama
- Natyashastra of Bharata Muni
- Poetics of Aristotle
- Public and Private
- Online and Offline
- Faces of Men
- Ritual Masks
- Integral Theory
- Integrated Self
- Integral Psychology
Erving Goffman
Source: THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Erving Goffman (1922–1982) developed a dramaturgical theory of the self and society inspired by Mead’s basic conception of social interaction. In the selection below, excerpted from the book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman presents a theory that likens social interaction to the theater. Individuals can be seen as performers, audience members, and outsiders that operate within particular “stages” or social spaces. Goffman suggests that how we present our selves to others is aimed toward “impression management,” which is a conscious decision on the part of the individual to reveal certain aspects of the self and to conceal others, as actors do when performing on stage.
List of Publications
- 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
- 1961a. Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. New York: The Bobbs- Merrill Co.
- 1961b. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
- 1963a. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
- 1963b. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Macmillan.
- 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Harper and Row.
- 1969. Strategic Interactions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row.
- 1976/1979. Gender Advertisements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
Source: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0228.xml
Erving Goffman
Introduction
The son of Ukrainian immigrant parents, Erving Manual Goffman was born on 11 June 1922 in Mannville, Alberta, Canada. He attended high school in Winnipeg and entered the University of Manitoba in 1939, majoring in natural sciences. However, his interests shifted toward the social sciences before he left in 1942, still some credits short of his degree. He returned to study at Toronto in 1944, obtaining a BA degree in 1945. That fall he began studies toward the MA degree in sociology at the University of Chicago. Initially influenced by W. Lloyd Warner, his 1949 master’s thesis gave an ethnographic analysis of the responses of cosmopolitan middle-class women as they refused to take entirely seriously the demands of the Thematic Apperception Test that Goffman administered. His doctoral dissertation, “Communication Conduct in an Island Community” (1953), was based on fieldwork in the Shetland Islands sponsored by the University of Edinburgh’s Social Anthropology department. In it Goffman first introduced the term “interaction order” to describe the domain of social life established by co-present persons. This was the sociological terrain he made his own. The investigation of the properties of the interaction order provided the thread that ran through the disparate topic-matters of his eleven books and more than a dozen significant journal articles. Goffman stayed another year in Chicago following the successful defense of his dissertation, drafting an original monograph (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, first published in 1956 in Edinburgh) and papers on face-work, embarrassment, involvement, and deference and demeanor. Between the end of 1954 and 1957 he worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, conducting the fieldwork and writing that led to Asylums (1961). Appointed to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1958, he rose quickly to full professor in 1962. A sabbatical year at Harvard prefigured a move to the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, where he remained until his untimely death in 1982.
Major Works
It was the publication of the enlarged Anchor Books edition of Goffman 1959 at signaled Goffman’s arrival as a distinctive voice within English-speaking sociology. He quickly consolidated his reputation with another four books appearing before the end of 1963. Goffman 1961a analyzes the mental patient’s situation. Goffman 1961b is a technical analysis of the role of fun and the mobilization of identity in interaction. Aspects of co-present behavior in public are covered in Goffman 1963a and Goffman 1971. Goffman 1963b is a classic contribution to deviance studies. Calculation and risk in face-to-face dealings are explored in Goffman 1967 and Goffman 1969. Goffman 1974 regrounds his sociology around the “frame” notion. Goffman 1979 is a classic contribution to visual sociology. Goffman 1981a provides unique insights into conversational interaction.
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: Univ. of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre.The long-established life as drama metaphor was adapted and developed to shed specific light on the details of face-to-face conduct. Goffman introduced the notion of impression management and developed his dramaturgical perspective in ingenious ways. Outlines six dramaturgical “principles”: performances, teams, regions and region behavior, discrepant roles, communication out of character, and the arts of impression management. It offered not a static classification of forms of conduct but an analysis examining dynamic issues about projecting and sustaining definitions of the situation.
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.A version of Goffman 1956 that retained the same chapter structure but expanded its content. New illustrations of dramaturgical concepts have been added to those already included in the earlier edition and illustrations previously mentioned in footnotes often relocated to the main text.
Goffman, Erving. 1961a. Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. New York: Anchor Books.Based on a year’s fieldwork at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC, the book presents four essays. The first examines the mental hospital as a closed environment, a “total institution”; the second, the changes in the mental patient’s framework for judging themselves and others (their “moral career”); the third analyzes the rich “underlife” of the hospital through which the patient can express distance from the model of social being held out by the hospital; the fourth is a critique of institutional psychiatry.
Goffman, Erving. 1961b. Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill.Encounters are those interactions where the participants sustain a single focus of cognitive and visual attention. Examination of the “fun in games” shows the importance of involvement and the “membrane” that selects the wider social attributes allowed to figure within the enclosed interaction. An alternative to functionalist role theory, “role distance” captures the actualities of interactional conduct expressed in the various forms of joking, irony, and self-deprecation that imply the self is other than the implied by current role demands.
Goffman, Erving. 1963a. Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: The Free Press.A study not of public places as such but of the kinds of interaction typically found therein. Introduces the key notions of unfocused interaction, where persons pursue their own concerns in the presence of others, and focused interaction where persons cooperate in sustaining a single focus of attention. Includes important discussions of situational proprieties, civil inattention, body idiom, involvement, and participation.
Goffman, Erving. 1963b. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.An examination of the situation and relationships of persons disqualified from full acceptance within a situation. Drawing on studies of disability, ethnicity, crime, deviance and social problems it shows how the “discredited” and the “discreditable” manage their dealings with “normals.” Presents useful distinctions between social, personal, and ego or felt identity and introduces the now popular notion of the “politics of identity.”
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Anchor Books.Draws together journal articles mainly from the 1950s on face-work, deference and demeanor, embarrassment, alienation from interaction, and mental symptoms, each demonstrating how a sociology of interaction focuses on “not men and their moments” but “moments and their men” (p. 3). Included also is a new study based on his observations of gambling in Nevada casinos, “Where the Action Is.” Goffman’s focus on “fateful” activities and situations (i.e., those both problematic and consequential) has catalyzed further studies of gambling and other risky activities.
Goffman, Erving. 1969. Strategic interaction. Philadelphia: Univ. of Philadelphia Press.The book’s two chapters examine the role of deception and calculation in “mutual dealings.” “Expression games” explore “one general human capacity . . . to acquire, reveal and conceal information” (p. 4) concentrating on the inferences that can be made about the intentions of others. “Strategic interaction” considers the bases of decision-making in circumstances that are mutually fateful. Both chapters complicate Mead’s notion of taking the attitude of the otherand the simple notions of intersubjectivity it sometimes implied.
Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books.Continues the interests in unfocused and focused interaction announced in Behavior in Public Places. Its six free-standing chapters explore “singles” and “withs,” types of personal territories that help preserve the self, “supportive interchanges,” and “remedial interchanges” that keep everyday dealings in good order “tie-signs” and “normal appearances” that enable relationships, places, and situations to make sense. The 1969 article “The Insanity of Place” is appended. Deeply biographical, it outlines the havoc wrought by a mentally ill person in the home.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay in the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Ten years in the making, and apparently intended as his magnum opus, Goffman explores experiential dimensions of social life. Offers a conceptual terminology addressing the fundamental practical problem, What is going on here? While experience is made sense via primary frameworks, these can be transformed into keyings and fabrications. How frames are grounded and their vulnerabilities is a major analytic concern. The conceptual framework is put to work in studies of the theatrical frame (chap. 5) and talk (chap. 13).
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender advertisements. London and Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.Analyzes how gender is displayed in advertising imagery using over five hundred advertisements and other public pictures. The leading themes of Goffman’s “pictorial pattern analysis” of the pictures—relative size, the feminine touch, function ranking, the family, the ritualization of subordination, and licensed withdrawal—manifest stark gender differences. Goffman’s book anticipates Judith Butler’s famed performativity thesis by over a decade.
Goffman, Erving. 1981a. Forms of talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Three of the book’s five chapters were previously published. “Replies and Responses” provides a critique of conversation analysis, presenting an ostensibly more open model of reference-response. “Response Cries” makes a case for a sociology of non-lexical utterances. “Footing” is a general statement about alignment: how co-conversationalists’ identities are evident in how we produce or receive talk. “The Lecture” applies much of the preceding approaches to the ceremonial lecture. “Radio Talk” concentrates on DJs’ speech errors in order to understand the features of imperfections in ordinary talk.
Emotionally Naked
- No Defenses
- No Guards
- No Masks
- No Boundaries
- No Frontstage
- No Backstage
- Completely Exposed
- Emotionally Naked.
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Key Sources of Research
An Interview With Erving Goffman, 1980
Verhoeven, Jef C.(1993)
Research on Language & Social Interaction,26:3,317 — 348
DOI: 10.1207/s15327973rlsi2603_5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2603_5
The Presentation of Self (Goffman’s Dramaturgical model)
Erving Goffman, Dramaturgy, and On-Line Relationships
Nikki Sannicolas
https://www.cybersociology.com/files/1_2_sannicolas.html
The Dramaturgical Model
Wood, J. T. (2004). Communication theories in action: An introduction (3rd ed., pp. 118– 122). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Goffman and Dramaturgical Sociology
- January 2017
- Project: Social Theory and Ethnography
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314405702_Goffman_and_Dramaturgical_Sociology
Presentation of Self in everyday life
Erving Goffman
Click to access Goffman_PresentationOfSelf.pdf
Erving Goffman
By Dr Phil Henry, University of Derby
in Sener, O., Sleap, F., & Weller, P. Dialogue Theories II. London: Dialogue Society, pp. 157-172
The private and the public in online presentations of the self
A critical development of Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective
Fredrik Aspling
Department of Sociology 2011
Master’s Thesis, 30 ECTS Sociology
Spring 2011
Supervisor: Árni Sverrisson
Click to access FULLTEXT01.pdf
Frant and Back Regions of Everyday Life
Erving Goffman
Click to access Goffman.Front.pdf
THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Erving Goffman
Metaphorical analogies in approaches of Victor Turner and Erving Goffman: Dramaturgy in social interaction and dramas of social life
Ester Võsu
Department of Ethnology, University of Tartu Ülikooli 18, 50410 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: ester.vosu@ut.ee
SME contractors on the stage for energy renovations?
A dramaturgical perspective on SME contractors’ roles and interactions with house owners
Meaningful Performances: Considering the Contributions of the Dramaturgical Approach to Studying Family
Jessica L. Collett* and Ellen Childs
University of Notre Dame
Sociology Compass 3/4 (2009): 689–706,
10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00223.x
Goffman’s Dramaturgy: A case study analysis for potential inclusion in communication theory studies
Jennifer Dell August 2014
The con man as model organism: the methodological roots of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical self
Michael Pettit
York University, Canada
History of the Human Sciences 000(00) 1–17
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1004.3724&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Lecture 27: The Dramaturgical Approach
Sociology 3308: Sociology of Emotions
Prof. J.S. Kenney
All The Web’s a Stage: The Dramaturgy of Young Adult Social Media Use
Jaime R. Riccio 2013
Theses – ALL. 16.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/16
https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1007&context=thesis
Chapter 4: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Click to access chapter%204%20outline.pdf
Public and private faces in web spaces – How Goffman’s work can be used to think about purchasing medicine online.
Lisa Sugiura
Working Papers in Health Sciences 1: 4 Summer ISSN 2051-6266 / 20130019
When Erving Goffman was a Boy
Sherri Cavan July, 2011
A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE AND SECOND LIFE
NİL MİT
2014
12 – Erving Goffman and Dramaturgical Sociology
- By Philip Manning
- Edited by Peter Kivisto, Augustana College, Illinois
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316677445.013
- pp 226-249
The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory
Print publication year: 2020 Online publication date: December 2020
Framing Social Interaction
Continuities and Cracks in Goffman’s Frame Analysis
Persson, Anders
Published: 2018-01-01
(1 ed.) London & New York: Routledge.
Click to access 9781317133544_preview.pdf
Self-Presentation on Social Networking Sites
Houda Sassi and Jamel-Eddine Gharbi
7 October 2015
Journal of Internet Social Networking and Virtual Communities http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JISNVC/jisnvc.html Vol. 2015 (2015), Article ID 406328, 9 pages
DOI: 10.5171/2015.406328
BACKSTAGE, FRONTSTAGE INTERACTIONS: EVERYDAY RACIAL EVENTS AND WHITE COLLEGE STUDENTS
Leslie A. Houts 2004
PhD Thesis
Say, display, replay: Erving Goffman meets Oscar Wilde
Jean-Rémi Lapaire
Miranda: Revue pluridisciplinaire sur le monde anglophone. Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world , Laboratoire CAS (Cultures anglo-saxonnes), 2016. halshs-01628909
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01628909/document
Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power *
Robert D. Benford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Scott A. Hunt, University of Kentucky
Sociological Inqiry Vol. 62, No. 1, February 1992
Social Dramaturgy: How We Develop Masks to Interact
https://exploringyourmind.com/social-dramaturgy-develop-masks-interact/
We Are All Considered Actors
Posted by VALERIE DUBROVSKY on
https://intheswarm.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/we-are-all-considered-actors/
Extending Goffman’s Dramaturgy to Critical Discourse Analysis: Ed Burkhardt’s Performance after the Lac-Mégantic Disaster
Jennifer Dell
Mount Saint Vincent University
C. GOFFMAN’S APPROACH TO SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM (ADAMS AND SYDIE, PP. 167-179).
Sociology 319 – Contemporary Social Theories
February 15, 2006
Symbolic Interactionism
Readings: CST, chapter 8 and two readings from Goffman in class handout.
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/319f1506.htm
Organizational Analysis: Goffman and Dramaturgy
Peter K. Manning
The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory, and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents
Edited by Paul Adler, Paul du Gay, Glenn Morgan, and Mike Reed
Print Publication Date: Oct 2014 Publication Date: Jan 2015
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199671083.013.0012
Frame Analysis: An essay on organization of experience
Erving Goffman
Viewpoints which Matter 
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