Erving Goffman’s Presentation of self in Everyday Life Part I: Performances & Teams

1. Erving Goffman’s Presentation of self in Everyday Life Part I: Performances & Teams Presented by Tina Quicoli

2. Performances

3. Belief in the part one is playing: • When an individual is playing a part it is requested that the audience take their impression seriously. • The audience is asked to believe that the character actually possesses the attitudes they appear to have. • At one extreme the individual may believe the show that they are putting on. The audience may believe their show too. • At the other extreme the individual does not believe in their own routine. • When the actor does not believe in their own act or have concern for his audience they are called cynical. • An individual may be called sincere when they believe the impression that they are putting on.

4. At each end of the continuum the individual is provided with a position that offers them their own securities and defenses. People are always playing roles and we know each other through these roles. A mask represents the conception that we have found ourselves. This is the role that we are trying to live up to and our truer self, the self we would like to be. We come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons.

5. Front: A performancerefers to all the activity of an individual that occurs during a period marked by their continuous presence before a particular audience. A frontis the part of the individual’s performance that functions in a general and fixed way that defines a situation for the audience. The front is expressive equipment of a standard kind that is intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during the performance.

6. Parts of the Front: The setting involves the physical layout and other background items that provide the scenery and the stage props for the show. A personal front refers to the other items of expressive equipment that are associated with the performer themselves and that we naturally expect will follow them where every they go. Appearance refers to the stimuli that act to tell the audience about the performer’s social status and their temporary ritual state. Manner refers to those stimuli that function to warn us of the interactional role that the actor is expected to play. The front becomes a collective representation and a fact in its own right.

7. Dramatic realization: While in the presence of others the individual infuses their activity with signs that dramatically highlight and portray confirmatory facts that might be unapparent or obscure. In order for an individual’s activity to become significant they must mobilize their activity so that it will convey what they want during the interaction.

8. Idealization: • When an individual presents in front of others their performance incorporates the values of the society. • This may be viewed as a ceremony or as an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community. • It is a biased performance that is accepted as reality and has the characteristics of a celebration. • The most important form of sign equipment is associated with social class and consists of status symbols through which material wealth is expressed.

9. When an individual performs in front of other they conceal more than inappropriate pleasures or economies. • First, they may engage in a profitable activity that are concealed from their audience and that are incompatible with the view of their activity that they are trying to obtain. • Second, there are errors and mistakes that are corrected before the performance takes place. • Third, the performers only show the audience the end product of the performance -- they are judged by the finished package. • Lastly, the performer fosters the impression that they have ideal motives for acquiring their role.

10. A performer fosters the belief that they are related to the audience in a more ideal way. • First, the individual fosters the impression that the routine that they are performing is their own routine or at least their most essential one. • The audience assumes the character projected before them is all that there is to the performer. • Secondly, the performer tends to foster the impression that their performance and their relationship to their audience are special and unique.

11. Maintenance of expressive control: • The performer relies on the audience to accept cues that act to signal something important about their performance. • Unmeant gestures may occur during a performance and convey impressions that are incompatible with the one that the performer is intending to foster. • A performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing their muscular control. • The performer may also act in a way that gives the impression that they are too concerned with the interaction. • Lastly, the performer may allow their presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical direction.

12. Misrepresentation: • The sign-accepting tendency puts the audience in a position to be duped and misled. • We ask whether a fostered impression is true or false we really mean whether or not the performer is authorized to give the performance. • The performer has a lot of responsibility and power towards shaping and controlling the impression being fostered. • The performer may use their authority and power to confuse and confess the truth to the audience.

13. Mystification: • It is possible for a man to work upon others through a false idea of their self. • The audience may sense a secret, mystery, and power behind the performance. • The performer may sense that his main secret is a petty one or a folk tale.

14. Reality and Contrivance: • We tend to see a performance as something that is not purposely put together, an unintentional product of the individual unconscious response to the fact in his situation. • We see a contrived performance as something that is pasted together there is no reality for which there is a direct response to • Performers may be sincerely convinced of their own sincerity, but this is not necessary. • An honest sincere performance may have less connect to the real world than we actually think.

15. Teams

16. A performer guides their private activities in accordance to existing moral standards. These standards may be associated with a reference group. This creates a non-present audience for their activities. • The individual privately maintains standards of behavior that they may not believe in due the belief that an unseen audience is present who will punish deviation from the standard. • In other words, an individual may be their own audience by imagining an audience to be present. • Then, it can be said that a team may stage performances for an audience that is not physically present to watch the show.

17. The definition of the situation that is projected by a participant is an integral part of a projection that is fostered and sustained by the intimate cooperation of more than one participant. • The performance team refers to any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single routine. • The concept of a team allows us to think of performances that are given by one or more performers. • It is also important to point out that teammates work together to form a team impression.

18. Members of a team are in an important relationship to each other. • Teammates are related to one another by bounds of reciprocal dependence and reciprocal familiarity: • First, team members are bound by a reciprocal dependency, which links them together. That is each team member is forced to rely on the good conduct and behavior of their fellows, and they are forced to rely on them. • Secondly, in order to maintain a given definition of the situation before an audience, members are forced to define one another as persons “in the know”. In other words, team members are bound by rights of “familiarity”.

19. One of the team’s main objectives is to maintain their impression and a consistent definition of the situation. • In order to protect their impression team members are required to postpone taking a public stand. Once a team’s stand has been taken all members are obligated to follow. Therefore, teammates avoid disagreements in front of an audience. • In addition, the official word must be made available to all teammates so that they can play their part. Withholding information from a teammate inhibits their ability to assert a self to an audience. • When a team member makes a mistake the other members often wait for the audience to leave before punishing them. • Lastly, only individual who can be trusted are selected to participate in the team. For this reason, children are often not included in teams.

20. A team is a group in relation to an interaction or series of interaction that are relevant to a particular definition of the situation. • A team has the character of a secret society. • The audience is aware of the fact that all members of the team are held together by a bond that no member of the audience shares. • Since we all participate in teams we all carry within ourselves the guilt of conspirators.

21. Discussion Questions: 1) Do you believe Goffman’s theory is a superficial theory of human action or not? 2) Is there really a backstage? 3) Why is it so easy for misrepresentation to take place?