Dramaturgical Analysis

This article will provide an overview of dramaturgical analysis. The article outlines the theory of Erving Goffman's analysis of social interaction in “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. A summary of the conceptual concepts of Goffman's work and a practical expression of these concepts within the dynamics of social interaction is also provided. This article also explores the significance of Goffman's ideas and writings. An explanation of the impact of Goffman's theories on the fields of sociology and psychology is included as well as a synopsis of subsequent research that confirmed many of Goffman's ideas and empirical critiques that questioned some of his conclusions. Specifically, this article explores some of the main criticisms that researchers have levied against Goffman's theories. These criticisms include the observation that Goffman's ideas do not account for the encounters an individual may have with subsets of their main audience wherein the individual assumes a partial "face" of the character or role normally played. This idea of fractional identities is a reality in daily life but is not covered in Goffman's writing. This article also summarizes the criticism that most individuals have a fluid concept of self that is constantly changing or is necessarily distinct from their authentic self because certain identities are assumed solely for a specific purpose or finite period of time. Lastly, this article explores the moral critique of Goffman's writings, which points out that not striving to live up to an authentic self is a morally inferior approach to life. Finally, this article discusses some of the applications of dramaturgical analysis. For instance, modern consumerism and simulated reality are both influenced by Goffman's theories.

Keywords Acting; Back Regions; Barriers to Perception; Character; Dark Secrets; Expressive Behavior; Front Regions; Given Acts; Given Off Acts; Impression Management; Inside Secrets; Performance Teams; Self; Social Self; Tact

Dramaturgical Analysis

Overview

Erving Goffman believed that individuals continually perform for each other during every day interactions. what others see is “rarely a person's "true self" but rather a contrived set of behaviors and props used to complete the performance” (1959, p. 22-24). Goffman termed this collection of behaviors and props the "front stage," which is what an individual continually shows to others. An individual's "backstage," is where the person can “relax, step out of character, and drop the act in an attempt to be more real” (p. 112), and is rarely seen by others. Goffman suggested that since the secret behavior of the person’s ‘performance’ is visible in the backstage where people behave out of character, the passages between backstage and front stage (which everyone can observe) must be kept closed to members of the audience. However, sometimes when an individual interacts with an audience member, he or she may unintentionally reveal a part of the backstage. Goffman calls this revelation a 'break in character.' These lapses “demonstrate that our interactions are in fact performances that occasionally suffer from spontaneous and unexpected peeks into our backstage areas” (Wosick-Correa and Joseph, 2008, p. 203).

The Presentation of Self

In Goffman's seminal work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), he describes the work that individuals do to project and maintain images of themselves during social interactions. This work, called impression management, is achieved through conscious, deliberate actions as well as through gestures and verbal and nonverbal communication. Many of the principles of Goffman's theory are patterned after dramatic and theatrical phrases and concepts. The following sections will describe Goffman's theory as well as its conceptual categories and practical expressions in more detail.

Theory

Although Goffman wrote broadly about the individual and social interactions, he is best known for his analysis of the ways in which individuals present and manage their identities and the impressions others have of them. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman postulated that, depending on their audiences and desired objectives, individuals use impression management, or techniques to control and shape others' impressions of them, to fluidly shift in and out of various characters. Like an actor, individuals have an authentic self that is shielded from others and prepped for public performances in private (i.e. the "back stage"), and a public self that performs a character for audiences in the "front stage." In some instances, performers may move from one stage to another in a single environment. Goffman cited courtrooms, hospitals, and department stores as environments in which individuals may shift from back stage to front stage appearances by stepping into character to play out a role (Sarbin, 2003).

Goffman's work not only identified an individual's presentation of self as a social product but also suggested that while individuals are able to strategically manipulate their social situations and others' impressions of them, they are not entirely free to define their images of themselves. Rather, people's definitions of themselves are constrained by the statuses, roles, and relationships that the social order accords them. As a result, individuals can manage their own self and the impressions others have of them, but only within the social structures that they are accorded through birth, family, marriage, work, socioeconomic status, and other social constructs.

Conceptual Categories

Goffman (1959) coined a unique vocabulary to describe how people socially interact with one another. He drew many of his concepts from stagecraft. Impression management refers to the process through which an individual creates performances in which he or she becomes an actor within his or her own life. Through impression management, the individual carefully strives to present a convincing image of him or her self to dialogue partners and other audiences. In Goffman's view, men and women are less “individuals trying to enact conventional roles” than they are actors trying to be someone or something. Thus, behavior is often assumed rather than reflexive, and is used to further the impression the individual desires to convey to his or her audience.

Further, Goffman believed that people shift between what he called the front stage, or front regions, and the back stage, or back regions. Each of these regions is defined by barriers to perception. Performances are acted out in the front regions, while, in the back regions, actors consciously contradict the performances they give in the front regions. Impression management occurs on in the front regions, while in the back regions actors shed their assumed roles. These two regions can be divided by different kinds of barriers to perception depending on the social situation. In a restaurant, for example, the kitchen door may be a barrier dividing the dining room, a front region, from the kitchen, a back region. A server's behavior in the dining room may be polite and courteous, while in the kitchen he or she may mock or complain about the customers.

In addition, some expressive acts of the performer are "given" while others are "given off." Given acts are deliberate verbal and gestural behaviors that the actor performs to create a particular impression of himself or herself. Given off acts are unintended or unwitting expressions, and are mainly nonverbal. Both types of acts are important cues to dialogue partners and other audience members. Some individuals are capable of finely tuned impression management skills and can simulate acts that appear to be given off. The ability to simulate apparently reflexive emotional expressions challenges the claims that most facial and bodily emotional displays are not under the individual's control but are instinctive and often unbeknownst to the individual (Sarbin, 2003).

Practical Expression

The presentation of self through impression management is not an isolated experience, according to Goffman. In fact, in most real-life situations, actors are parts of performance teams in which individuals collaborate with one another to perform a role or function. For instance, a performance team may be a doctor and nurse, teacher and student, supervisor and employee, or even husband and wife.

Although the concept of a performance team is suggestive of cooperative, consensual and apparent conduct, Goffman also alleges that performance teams may create and harbor secrets. For instance, to facilitate their performance team members necessarily share inside secrets. Meanwhile, dark secrets are secrets that would undermine the team's performance, and thus must be kept hidden. Additionally, strategic secrets are information or plans that may be used against an adversary (Sarbin, 2003).

Goffman pointed out that teams rarely keep their secrets perfectly because the individuals constituting the team all perform divergent roles. In addition, the team may be infiltrated by what Goffman calls an informer, or a person who, gaining access to the team's backstage region, reveals the team's secrets to the audience watching the front stage region (Sarbin, 2003).

However, groups acting as performance teams can be highly effective. Members of groups or performance teams may be fully aware of their participation in the performance team, and members may even discuss among themselves how to enhance their roles or further the performance team's objectives. Goffman used the term staging talk to describe a discussion in which performance team members confer about the problems of staging a performance. For instance, the members might talk about how their most recent performance, a practice that is often intentionally done by corporate employees or athletes. Staging talk strengthens the team's morale, and helps members recover from poor performances (Sarbin, 2003).

Performance teams may even adjust their performance while in front of an audience, yet without the audience's knowledge of the practice. Goffman termed this subtle technique team collusion, describing it as a strategy through which team members communicate backstage information to one another while still maintaining their front stage performance. Through it, they can express thoughts that might be objectionable to the audience and undermine their performance (Sarbin, 2003).

Significance of Goffman's Theory

Goffman's theory on the presentation of self had an immediate and significant effect upon his contemporaries' research and discourse. Not only were his theories read and analyzed widely, his objective, nonjudgmental writing style was groundbreaking and highly acclaimed.

Impact on the Field

Goffman's central work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, had a substantial and sustained impact on the fields of sociology and psychology. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide and attained the status of a modern classic (Sarbin, 2003). Published in 1959, the book struck a chord with its proposition that human behavior was significantly shaped by the nuances of social situations. Up until that time, social psychology was largely driven by genetic, biological, and environmental theories of human behavior. Goffman's book thus precipitated an entirely new approach to social psychology. He believed that human behavior was not solely instinctual or reactive, but rather conscious and purposeful, as, through performances, people sought to maintain clearly defined impressions of themselves and impact given situations.

Goffman's greatest contribution to the study of human behavior was his identification and categorization of numerous subtle verbal and nonverbal communications. These conceptual categories described what had been formerly an instinctively understood experience of human behavior. By mining and naming these perceptions, Goffman brought to the fore an arena of human behavior that had never before been discussed.

Subsequent Research

A large body of research has emerged from Goffman's theses on impression management (Sarbin, 2003). The findings are consistent with Goffman's claims that people employ strategic acts, tactical maneuvers, and protective behaviors to create a definition of a situation in the service of presenting and maintaining an impression of oneself, as well as to facilitate civility and social order.

In addition, other researchers have identified patterns of behavior in crowds that mimic the individual behaviors of performers, audience members, spectators, and bystanders (Hare & Blumberg, 1988). Crowds tend to display redundant behaviors that are universal to all collective encounters. Thus, while the task activity refers to the event for which the crowd is gathered, the crowd participants engage in certain other behaviors—such as boisterous celebration, mimicking or commenting on the task activity, mocking or commenting on other spectators, or initiating an activity of their own—and become task performers. Oftentimes, the crowd participants attract so much attention that they divide the attention of spectators until they are forced to disperse by police or security forces.

Empirical Critique

Goffman's claim that a person is primarily a performer trying to impress audiences might be interpreted as a form of cynicism. However, from the dramaturgical perspective, it is undeniable that social life is profoundly influenced by the desire to convey an image and put on a show. Goffman argued that being a socialized human inevitably implies that situations will arise in which it is necessary to engage in some form of pretense; however, he placed no value judgment on this phenomenon. Rather, he only noted that it exists and described it as he understands it.

Goffman's writing style was as inventive as his concepts. He wrote in a tone that was matter of fact, objective, and nonjudgmental. He did not venture to make a moral evaluation of dramaturgical acts. On the contrary, he treated the individual's use of role playing as an unavoidable consequence of maintaining social equilibrium and of facilitating a positive definition of a social interaction. Thus, some critics have even argued that Goffman regarded the use of artifice to maintain civility and social order as a form of altruism, in that it enabled individuals to assist their audience in understanding a situation in the best possible terms (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

Critique of Goffman's Theory

Although Goffman's theories in The Presentation of Self were well received by his contemporaries and continue to be widely read and discussed, critics have pointed out weaknesses in his ideas.

Fractional Audiences & Multiple Faces

One critique of Goffman's dramaturgical analysis involves the offstage portion of a person's performance. Individuals prepare backstage for their front stage performances before an audience, often in conjunction with performance team members. However, individual actors may meet the audience, or subsets of the audience "offstage," or independently of the team performance. In this case, the individual may act out a specific performance for the audience segment, thus conveying multiple nuances of the same character depending on the composition and scope of the audience. However, Goffman's critics say, his theory does not account for the subtleties that may arise as one individual displays varying degrees of a character role by performing offstage. Given that individuals rarely consistently perform a static character before the same audience, it becomes impossible for individuals to have a definitive offstage "face" that is applicable and standard to every interaction. In reality, individuals may act out an unlimited number of offstage performances, which may color subsequent onstage performances before wider audiences. There is thus a person may have multiple offstage faces, a factor that is not accounted for in Goffman's theory (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

Fluidity of the Concept of Self

Some of Goffman's critics also point out that an individual's definition of himself or herself is a fluid concept that is subject to change over time. Indeed, Goffman's critics have argued that large periods of a person's life are ostensibly artificial, and that any associations an individual makes with certain social constructs are inherently temporary and superficial. For instance, a college student who performs construction work during the summer probably does not expect to permanently identify himself or herself as a student or as a construction worker. Instead, it is understood that college and summer jobs are, by nature, temporary experiences that serve to transition young people from adolescence into adulthood. Young people may spend years as undergraduate or graduate students, but, while they may attempt to manage impressions about themselves to a certain extent during these years, their permanent selves are "on hold" until they graduate and align themselves with careers and social positions.

Still, even after people graduate and enter the workforce, Goffman's critics point out that their presentations of self continue to change, sometimes in dramatic ways. Throughout their lives, individuals may redefine their senses of themselves and their personal goals, as well as react to unexpected events such as job loss, illness, or serious accidents. Thus, while impression management and the presentation of self are theoretically within an individual's control, complex and unanticipated events may diminish this control (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

The Morality of Performance

Goffman's central theses revolve around the wide variety of performances individuals enact in the interest of presenting their desired selves and managing others' impressions of themselves. However, while Goffman wrote widely about a concept of "self," he did not clearly articulate his sense of a self. In much of his writing, the self is no more than the image that the individual wants to portray at a given juncture in any interpersonal interaction. Thus, the self is essentially a social self that is context dependent and can be manipulated like a personal possession external to the individual.

Goffman's theories mainly focused on actions performed in the presence of others, meaning that he was primarily interested in exploring the facets of social interactions. However, because Goffman did not cast the presentation of self in any moral light, his theories seem to acknowledge that people will do almost anything to present themselves in the desired light. Goffman cites numerous examples of individuals masking their true feelings, telling lies, or simply expressing half-truths in order to project and maintain a desired impression. Because Goffman does not condemn dishonesty or insincerity, his critics have argued that he failed to balance his theories against the values of honesty, authenticity, and meaningful communication.

Goffman did, however, offer some insight into his views on the morality of impression management. He argued that the practice of impression management was an amoral technique could be used to advance a moral activity. Thus, according to Goffman, the actual techniques used in the presentation of self were not the result of moral choices but rather necessary techniques that were selected and used to facilitate moral decisions, intentions, or activities. He believed that individuals could make moral choices on the macro level of their lives and use amoral dramaturgical techniques on the micro level to carry out these choices (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

While Goffman offered some comment on the morality of impression management, he failed to address the morality of striving to live out an "authentic self" or to be truthful within relationships and societies. Thus, while Goffman is widely acclaimed for unraveling many of the subtleties of social interactions, he has also been criticized for not striving to balance his views within the context of the broader virtues of authenticity and honesty.

Applications

Goffman's writings stemmed from his central premise that human beings function as actors in social interactions. People intentionally assume certain roles or behavior to convey a desired impression to their audience, he believed. Individuals may act out certain roles that are coincident with the reality of their lives, such as a licensed medical physician assuming the behaviors of a doctor, or they may act out false roles with which they wish to become identified. Thus, social interactions form stages upon which individuals act out the dramas of their lives. Although communication and social norms are far more transparent now than they were in the decades when Goffman was living and working, many of his ideas and theories are still evident in modern society and social interactions.

Modern Consumerism

Writing largely in the late 1950s and 1960s, Goffman was among those who believed that social relations were becoming increasingly organized around the appearance of things, rather than the substance of things. The modern consumerist era was rapidly emerging in the wake of World War II, and social criticism was beginning to observe that, alongside it, conformity was replacing the traditional American and Western values of self-understanding and authentic community (Lemert & Branaman, 1997). Social commentators noted that, as Goffman theorized, Americans were beginning to assume roles and characteristics in order to be perceived as prosperous, happy, and successful. They were beginning to use props such as consumer goods to express their status and convey an image, rather than to perform a function or add value to their inner lives. This cultural shift disturbed many critics and individuals, and continues to do so today, because of its suggestion that appearance is as significant a factor in social reality as traditional values such as truth, honesty, and authentic communication.

Reality as Simulation

The expression "life imitates art" conveys a certain reality that Goffman described as a process of simulation. For instance, a famous model wearing a famous designer's clothing is not only modeling the apparel, but is also simulating a lifestyle, status, and luxurious reality; a person who buys the clothing may hope to likewise simulate that lifestyle, status, and reality. Similarly, individuals may act and react in a certain way simply because they observed others making these actions and reactions and, thereby, understood them to be reality. One example of simulation Goffman gives is mothers who care for their children the same way their own mothers cared for them. By doing so, these mothers simulate their own past experiences of mothering (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

Goffman argued that there is very little that goes on in daily life that is not in some way a simulation of what individuals imagine they ought to be or do that is based upon their experiences of others. Hence, most behavior is a fabrication of the roles we think we ought to play in any given situation. As a result, within Goffman's theory cultures become collective representations of the frames of reality that are understood and perpetuated though simulated behavior.

Online Identities

Social networking sites are major forums in which individuals create and manage their presentation of self. For instance, websites such as Facebook allow users to create an online presence that is bolstered by photos, biographical information, commentary about hobbies and entertainment preferences, and comments from other users. By manipulating this data, individuals are able to implement the same "impression management" techniques in cyberspace that they might use in a live social interaction. Although some websites are more static in that they only allow users to post a profile about themselves, other sites provide a platform whereby users may communicate in front of an audience of other users by posting a comment or conversation directly on to an individual user's profile.

Conclusion

Goffman's ideas and writings had a significant and lasting influence on the study of human interaction and communication. Many researchers have continued to develop Goffman's theories in subsequent studies of human social interaction. However, other researchers have criticized Goffman for failing to account for certain aspects of social interactions, such as how individuals may act out different facets of their character when in front of some, but not all, of their desired audience. Additionally, critics point out that an individual may play a role for a short period of time without ever assimilating that character into his or her essential self. Goffman has also been criticized for failing to comment on the morality of inauthentic communication or role playing as a proxy for substantive communication. Goffman's work can still be applied to contemporary concerns like the roles that consumerism, simulated reality, and online identities play in social interactions in today's world.

Terms & Concepts

Acting: The art of playing a role. Goffman used acting and theater as metaphors to describe human social interaction.

Back Regions: Where an individual knowingly contradicts the performances carried out in the front region. Also called "back stage."

Barriers to Perception: Obstacles that intervene between the front and back regions, thereby defining both.

Character: The role that an individual plays in any given presentation of self.

Dark Secrets: Facts about a performance team that it knows and conceals and which are incompatible with the image that the team tries to present to the audience.

Expressive Behavior: Involuntary actions and reactions that are largely beyond an individual's ability to control.

Front Regions: Where an individual's or team's performance is given in order to project a certain impression upon an audience.

Given Acts: The deliberate verbal and gestural behaviors that an actor performs to create a particular impression of himself or herself.

Given Off Acts: Unintended or unwitting expressions that are mainly nonverbal.

Impression Management: The process through which people act out a particular role or identity in order to influence the opinions others form of them, in order to control the impressions other people form of them. The conscious or unconscious process attempts to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event by regulating information in social situations.

Inside Secrets: Secrets that, when possessed, mark a individual as a member of a performance group.

Performance Teams: A collaboration of individuals, such as a doctor and nurse, that performs a role or function,.

Self: The way an individual defines and experiences him or herself and then attempts to communicate this definition and experience to others through performance in voluntary, intentional actions.

Social Self: The impressions and images expected from an individual actor. This process is regulated internally and externally to the individual.

Tact: A social maneuver that individuals use to save face in stressful situations or to deflect criticism in fledgling relationships.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Hays, M. & Weinert, C. (2006). A dramaturgical analysis of shift report patterns with cost implications: A case study. Nursing Economics, 24 , 253–262. Retrieved May 30, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22955068&site=ehost-live

Meyrowitz, J. (1995). New sense of politics: How television changes the political drama. Research in Political Sociology, 7, 117–138. Retrieved May 30, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=15088185&site=ehost-live

Scheff, T. (2011). Parts and wholes: Goffman and Cooley. Sociological Forum, 26, 694–704. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=64115403

Snow, D. (1979). A dramaturgical analysis of movement accommodation: Building idiosyncrasy credit as a movement mobilization strategy. Symbolic Interaction, 2 , 23–44. Retrieved May 30, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=14257744&site=ehost-live

Vollmer, H. (2013). What kind of game is everyday interaction?. Rationality & Society, 25, 370–404. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=89022794