Analysis Of Goffman`s `presentation Of Self`.

Outline and critically assess Goffman's view of the 'presentation of self in everyday life'.

The way in which Goffman explains how people present themselves in society is with the metaphor of a theatrical performance. The world is turned into a living stage where everyone is an actor, tuning their performances in accordance of social constraints. A key concept he used to explain this is Dramaturgy. A term commonly used in theatre, the actor or dramaturgist is entrusted with the task of writing or constructing a scri pt and then in turn it's physical representation. A dramaturgist constructs the story and then plays the part using structure, metaphors and symbolic gestures to portray the story and the character they represent to the audience. It is important to note than an actor is also an audience to the audience, the actor can gauge the audience's reaction to his performance and adjust it accordingly.

As 'performers' in society we can choose our stage (social context) and our props (clothing, hobbies etc) to give the performance that we want. Goffman compared these two choices to a 'backstage' and a frontstage'. The backstage being the place where we choose our props, think how we want to be perceived by others and plan our performance accordingly. Of course, the frontstage is where we carry out our performance, by using the metaphor of a stage he is referring to social interaction. We use these performances to give off impressions about ourselves and perhaps control what other people think of us. This also works the other way around, we judge a person by the way they carry their performance in the chosen situation and the props they used. Others are our audience, and vice versa, we modify our performance in accordance to our audience which is respectively another performer. This rings true with the theory of Dramaturgy, we represent ourselves in a chosen way by modifying everything to do with our performance, mostly premeditated but sometimes spontaneously. This is very prominent in teenagers. They are often unaware of the kind of person they want to be but as well as this they strive to fit in and be accepted, they are constantly modifying their performance by being an audience to others that they admire.

The way in which we can modify our performance is distancing ourselves from our expected character or role. This is what Goffman called 'role distance'. The notion that people all have a role or roles within society and can distance our self from the conventions that are implied with the role. We can flout the maxims associated with the role so we can appear that we aren't as connected with out role as other might think. This applies very strongly to teenagers, their role is a student in education who is under the authority of adults and all their behaviour is institutionalised within their chosen place of study. But by distancing themselves from this role by perhaps sitting in the back of the class and acting as if they don't care about education will show others that they have a rebellious streak. "An individual may affect the embracing of a role in order to conceal a lack of attachment to it, just as he may affect a visible disdain for a role." Now this is merely a performance, if there was no audience the role distancing by the teenager wouldn't occur as they have nothing to prove to society. Goffman created a model that portrays this theory very simply but effectively. He uses a merry-go-round and the age of it's riders. He observes how the riders take on and perform the role and how age affects their performance and how much they distance the role from themselves. He noticed that adults would make a mockery of the role in front of their friends to suggest to others that are above these childish practices. "Merry-go-round horsemen are very ingenious and may frankly wait for each time they pass their waiting friends before playing through their gestures of role distance".

These performances of course rely on the fact that everyone else is playing the game. People perform in accordance to the fact that everyone else is performing as well, this is what we base our rules of performance on, as well as social contexts which are intrinsically created by peoples values and ideologies. If a person were to break the rules of performance or actually not perform at all on stage then the construction of society and reality would be broken. "a better similie would be that of acrobats engaged in perilous balancing acts , holding up between them the swaying structure of the social world" . Georg Simmel, a German sociologist also had a perspective on this. He argued that people 'played' society through the use of sociability. He uses the example of a party of how social contexts force people to all play by the same rules in certain situations, if any one person breaks these rules then society breaks down. He claims that at a party people leave behind serious identities that they usually perform in light of and engage in a constructed context with playful, idle chit chat without a hidden motive. If one person was to break these conventions then the sociability would break down, "Anyone who brings in the gravity (in both senses of the word) of 'serious' outside interests immediately shatters this fragile artifice of make believe."

By applying George Herbert Mead's theory of Self we can see that some aspects of Goffman's ideas do not take into account the impulsive nature of a human identity. Mead coined the notion that 'Self' is constructed of two parts, 'I' and 'Me'. The 'I' is the spontaneous and impulsive part of your self identity in which your creativity and thoughts are portrayed. When engaging in a social performance our responses are usually impulsive and thought of at that moment, almost like a reflex, this is the 'I' within us and the 'Me' has the function of looking back at what we had said and decide whether it was the right or wrong thing to say in a given situation. The 'Me' is what we would use if we were to modify our social performances, we would look at previous interactions and current social contexts and evaluate how we would respond to others in conversation. When Goffman talks about role distancing he is saying that people don't have a sense of 'I', everything they do and say is premeditated. "The 'I' disappears at the very moment when it performs its function; once it presents itself as a past actor, it ceases to be an 'I' and becomes a 'Me'." There is no sense of individuality; everything we do is controlled by past interactions and social contexts. We are confined to giving answers that would please our audiences and none of our individuality is shown through our performance. Mead also argued that people like Ghandi and other visionaries had a very strong sense of 'I' meaning that they had a very strong sense of individuality and rarely modified their behaviour in their social performances. The 'I' in us is creative and the 'Me' is used to conform. As a performance is modified to conform to certain social pressures there is no sense of 'I' and in turn no sense of self.

Goffman argues that we create the scenes for our social performances, as well as creating the performance and it's props, it is somewhat an extension of our backstage preparation. This suggests we are fully in control of the parts of society that we interact in, if we can control the social context then in turn we control how everyone else modifies their behaviour within society. The whole theme behind his theories is the notion of self but when looking at this perspective Goffman was only thinking about himself. If everyone has the ability to create the scene in which they perform then surely you would often encounter situations that you weren't prepared for, everyone would be performing to a different tune. Everyday people encounter social situations that they aren't comfortable with, for example starting a new job or being introduced to new people, we cannot prepare a performance for these kinds of situations as we have never been in them before. The use of the 'I' is prominent in these situations, we are gathering information about the scene and its audience as we go along and impulsively respond, in a way, like improvisation theatre. "It is all too likely that when we find ourselves in settings devised by others, we compose our behaviour, and even our purposes and feelings, so as to be in compliance with settings enclosing us."

With the use of role distance and the fact that we create our performances we are basically saying that presentation of our self is just a lie. We are modifying our behaviour to an extent that none of our actual identity is apparent, it is all just a constructed identity, the person we want other to see us as. We spend so long backstage perfecting our performance and trying our best to give off a certain impression to others that our actual self is overshadowed by our constructed self, thus eliminating any sense of self. "the self he would like to be and which, in the end, becomes second nature, his 'truer' self." The fact that we aren't being ourselves suggests that no one is a true individual, just someone who has modified their behaviour to conform to certain social expectations, no 'I' just all 'Me'. "All of which adds to the impression of falsity, of human action as founded on pretence, even deceit."

Goffman's 'The Presentation of self' raises some interesting theories about the sense of self and how we portray ourselves in society. The notion of Dramaturgy being used in our presentation of self is very interesting and valid, but to certain extents. We do modify our behaviour behind closed doors so that we can give off certain impressions but not to the extent that all sense of individuality is discarded. Mead's model of the 'I' and 'Me" can tell us a lot about the extents of Goffman's theories by showing that not all of our behaviour is premeditated, it is often the spontaneous individual within us controlling our behaviour in society.

References

Burns, T. (2002). Erving Goffman. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 118. Brisset, D. and Edgley, C. (1975). Life As Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 54. da Silva F C. (2007). G.H. Mead: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. 51.

Goffman, E. (1969) Role distance. In L. Loser and B. Rosenberg (ed.) Sociological theory: a book of readings. London: Collier, 5pp. page nos 314-318