The best way to understand human action is by seeing people as actors on a ‘social stage’ who actively create an impression of themselves for the benefit of an audience (and, ultimately themselves).
When we act in the
social world, we put on a ‘front’ in order to project a certain image of
ourselves (call this part of our ‘social identity’ if you like) – we create a
front by manipulating the setting in which we perform (e.g. our living room),
our appearance (e.g. our clothes) and our manner (our emotional demeanour).
In the social world we
are called upon to put on various fronts depending on the social stage on which
we find ourselves and the teams of actors with whom we are performing – the
work-place or the school are typical examples of social stages which require us
to put on a front. On these social stages we take on roles, in relation to
other team-members and carefully manage the impressions we give-off in order to
‘fit in’ to society and/ or achieve our own personal goals
Impression management
involves projecting an ‘idealised image’ of ourselves, which involves
concealing a number of aspects of a performance – such as the effort which goes
into putting on a front, and typically hiding any personal profit we will gain
from a performance/ interaction.
Unfortunately because
audiences are constantly on the look-out for the signs we give off (so that
they can know who we are) ‘performers
can stop giving expressions, but they cannot stop giving them off’. This
means that we must be constantly on our guard to practice ‘expressive control’
when on the social stage. There are plenty of things that can go wrong with our
performance which might betray the fact that we are not really the person who
our act suggests that we are – we might lose bodily control (slouch), or make
mistakes with our clothing (a scruffy appearance) for example.
Acting out social roles
is quite demanding and so in addition to the front-stage aspect of our lives,
we also have back-stage areas where we can drop our front and be more relaxed, closer
to our ‘true-selves’, and where we can prepare for our acting in the world.
We generally tend to
think of performances as being of one or two types – the sincere and the
contrived. Some people sincerely believe in the parts they are playing, they invest
their true selves in the impression they give off, this is the typical case.
However, other people act out their roles more cynically – they do not believe
the parts they are playing are a reflection of their ‘true selves’ but instead
only play their part in order to achieve another end.
However, 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’ and most people oscillate between
sincerity and cynicism throughout the day and throughout the role they are
playing.
Some of the roles we
play contradict each other – and so we need to keep audiences separate – some
performances are only meant for certain audience members – For example a
student might act studiously while at school but more care-free while amongst
his friends outside of school.
Thankfully most audience
members are tactful and voluntarily stay away from back-stage areas where we
prepare for our social roles, and if we ever ‘fall out of character’ they tend
to engage in ‘tactful inattention’ in order to save the situation.
The significance of
Goffman’s work for A level Sociology
From a theoretical point of view Goffman criticises
structuralist (Functionalist and Marxist) theories of socialisation – Marxism
for example argues that school socialises children to passively accept
authority and hierarchy thus preparing them for exploitation in later life.
What Goffman’s theory suggests is that many children might just be acting out
this acceptance of hierarchy in order to get through school with as little
hassle as possible, while backstage they may think school is not particularly
important, and they may not accept authority.
From a research methods point of view the significance
of Goffman lies in the fact that if we really want to understand people, we
would need to engage in participant-observation in order to get back-stage with
them, because we only get to see peoples true feelings when they stop
performing.
If a researcher merely
gave people a questionnaire to fill out, or even if they did an in-depth interview
with them – they could be perceived by the respondent as a member of an
audience – and the results we get could just be a performance put on for the
benefit of the researcher.
Ultimately from this Interactionist/
dramaturgical perspective human interaction is so intricately
complex that the correct way to study human action is to look at either
individuals or small groups and focus on the efforts they make to maintain
their identities in public, and how these social identities differ from their
more relaxed selves when they are back-stage.
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.
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.’
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