Unit Essay 3
Gracyn Troupe
Department of Sociology, Longwood University
SOCL 401: Sociological Theory
Dr. Scott Grether
December 1, 2023
Erving Goffman is a Canadian-American sociologist who was born in Mannville, Canada in June of 1922 and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in November of 1982 (American Sociological Association, 2023). He spent the majority of his life living in the United States, teaching at universities. Goffman himself earned a Ph.D. in sociology in 1953 and was the president of the American Sociological Association from 1981 to 1982 (Grether, 2023). The social and economic contexts of Erving Goffman’s life are the Civil Rights era, the Great Depression, and wars such as WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War; these social and economic phenomena in which Goffman lived through contribute to Goffman’s thought about the social world in which he studied (Grether, 2023). Goffman’s studies focused on face-to-face communication and the formalities of social interaction between individuals. Erving Goffman’s major concerns in his work are the understanding of interactions between beings, social roles within society, and the presentation of the self. Goffman questioned the roles individuals play within social interaction, how individuals utilize the front and back stages of social life, what face-to-face interaction entails, how social order is used in everyday life, and how beings deal with identities that are stigmatized (Grether, 2023). Goffman wanted to expose the dynamics attached to social interaction and how people utilize these to structure their social worlds. He was influenced by Herbert Blumer who coined the term “symbolic interactionism,” symbolic interactionism is the way that “people act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them; and these meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation.”
Some of Erving Goffman’s key contributions to sociology are the concepts of the front stage and back stage, impression management, the dramaturgy model, and the 3 premises within this model. The front stage refers to social interactions that happen in front of people in public spaces, an example of this would be individuals going to work or school compared to them being at home, when individuals go out to public places they usually put on different clothes or carry a certain persona (Everyday Sociology Blog: When Back Stage becomes Front Stage: Goffman’s Dramaturgy in the Age of Teleconferencing, 2020). People in the front stage are able to act a certain way in order for people to perceive them in certain ways (Goffman, 1959). The back stage consists of areas that are private, areas that an audience or the public cannot see, for instance, being at home would be the back stage instead of being visible to the public (Everyday Sociology Blog: When Back Stage becomes Front Stage: Goffman’s Dramaturgy in the Age of Teleconferencing, 2020). Impression management, according to Goffman, is the way in which we watch the people that we encounter and interact with (Joshi, 2022). When individuals interact with others they are called actors, when people interact with other actors they want to present themselves in a certain way so that others will accept them. Members of the audience, in this case it would be the public, may disturb this performance which is why the actors try to maintain their impressions, this is called impression management (Joshi, 2022). Dramaturgy views social life as a theatrical performance, meaning that all individuals are actors on a stage that have specific roles, scripts, costumes, and sets. In dramaturgy, individuals act in different ways depending on the context of social interaction in which they encounter. There are three premises within dramaturgy, the first premise states that we only know a person by what they show us, the public. The second premise refers back to impression management, we present ourselves in certain ways to be perceived how we want to and satisfy specific audiences. The third premise states that the more that an individual engages in a specific interaction, the more strongly the person is able to feel a sense of self.
Goffman’s work regarding dramaturg helps us understand interactions between individuals that happen within society, especially through social media as it is so prevalent in today’s world. The front stage can still be shown through interactions between people that happen in the public eye, but in today’s time it can be seen through social media; social media posts, and interactions. Everything that is posted onto a social media account becomes public whether it is pictures or a word post, these are posts that are visible to those who click on your profile or follow you. An individual can make others on social media perceive them in certain ways based on what they are wearing and what they are doing in their posts, this would be considered the performance. The back stage, when it comes to social media, is where an individual prepares their performance; their performance could be prepared face-to-face or online, this could be the construction of the social media post. How individuals present themselves is constructed through the preparation process (Joshi, 2022). The first and second premise is shown through social media by individuals only posting what they want people to see and by this, we as the public, perceive them in certain ways. The third premise can be shown through an individual posting the same type of posts and once this is done many times, the posters themselves will start to perceive themselves that way.
References
Daniels, A. K. (1983). Erving Manual Goffman. American Sociological Association. https://www.asanet.org/erving-manual-goffman/
Sternheimer, K. (2020, May 4). When back stage becomes front stage: Goffman’s Dramaturgy in the Age of … When Back Stage Becomes Front Stage: Goffman’s Dramaturgy in the Age of Teleconferencing. https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2020/05/when-back-stage-becomes-front-stage-goffmans-dramaturgy-in-the-age-of-teleconferencing.html
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.
Grether, S. (2023, November 25). Goffman.Pptx [PowerPoint Slides]. https://canvas.longwood.edu/courses/1310260/files/58145691?module_item_id=13400184
Joshi, M. (2022, May 11). Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Approach – Madhura Joshi. Doing Sociology. https://doingsociology.org/2022/05/11/erving-goffmans-dramaturgical-approach-madhura-joshi/