Sociology blog


Jordan Chase 
The Presentation of self in everyday life


This article explores the ideas of Erving Goffman's 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman likens social interactions to a play at the theater with people playing different roles and audience members as people watching how we interact with each other. he compares front stage to how people act when in public or with other people. and backstage to how people act when they are by themselves (more relaxed)
Goffman also states that when people interact socially they are engaged in the process of "impression management,"  which means that they act in a way that avoids embarrassment this is done by making sure everyone has a complete understanding of the situation and can and will act accordingly. Goffman also writes how "Appearance functions to portray to the audience the performer’s social statuses...Manner refers to how the individual plays the role and functions to warn the audience of how the performer will act or seek to act in a role".  these excerpts from the article describe the way people act like characters of plays are described and act. I found this article to be very intriguing and it ultimately made a lot of sense. most of Goffman's claims are well thought out and hard to counter. In my personal opinion while these actions may be correct I feel as if Goffman paints humans as two dimensional characters in reality people are more complex and act in many different sorts of ways that don't align with social norms and played out archetypes. I have not read his book so I cannot say with 100% certainty that he does not cover this argument point, but from my knowledge it doesn't seem like he sees people as being more than just one type of stereotype that acts in ways that align with that perception of them.

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